


It Cages a Demon

by TripleX_Tyrant



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: Blood, Body Horror, Canon Compliant, Canon ages, Gore, Horror, Incest, M/M, Metaphysics, Puzzles, Sexual Imagery, Sexual Themes, Survival Horror, Violence, incestuous themes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-25
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2018-07-18 06:05:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 66,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7302502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TripleX_Tyrant/pseuds/TripleX_Tyrant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Rick captures a powerful being from a demonic dimension - a demon with the ability to devour thoughts - Morty's consciousness is pulled into the demon's cage. Rick must go in after him before Morty's consciousness is completely consumed. But this isn't what the inside of the cage should look like. And if Rick wants to save Morty, he'll have to survive in a place where paths are unclear and monsters manifest.</p><p>Rick knew his own mind was complex. But he wasn't ready for this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Metal Pyramid

**Author's Note:**

> Hello readers! My idea for this fic comes from my love of survival horror video games. Especially those whose stories delve into the psychological aspects of the characters. But instead of saying "Rick and Morty go to Silent Hill!" or "Rick and Morty go to Japan and find a mysterious camera!" I wondered what a survival horror situation in the Rick and Morty world would be. What would our C-137 boys do in that situation? Thus, this story. I hope you enjoy.
> 
> *NOTICE* The story is currently rated M, but there will be some sexual images at times. If you read it and believe it really warrants an Explicit rating, message me. I'll consider it.
> 
> 10/5/2017 Update: Due to the episode "Morty's Mind Blowers" revealing that Rick has memory-altering technology, this fic now officially does NOT follow C-137, but rather a nearly parallel Rick and Morty. You may have read it this way to begin with.

Waves of molten rock crashed against the sides of a high, rocky peninsula, raining fire on its scorched edges. Rick and Morty bolted across the land, ground rough beneath their feet, Rick clutching the triangular base of a pyramid-shaped device in one hand. A large beast with the body of a monkey and a dog-like muzzle flew high above them, chasing them, its taut, flesh wings spanning twenty feet and bombarding the pair with powerful gusts that nearly knocked them to the ground with each flap. With nothing but cliffs from which to plummet on either side, the two had only one available path: forward. But the ground was quickly narrowing, and if they ran much further, they were soon going to reach a place where the ground barely gave room for the width of one of Morty’s feet.

“Hohh, what are we gonna do?” Morty cried out, his legs burning and growing weaker. Rick grabbed the front of his shirt, yanking him to keep him running even as the ground dwindled drastically.

“Don’t slow down!” Rick barked before shoving the metal pyramid into Morty’s hands. “Hold this!”

Morty clutched the thing to his chest with both hands, staring at it and failing to watch his step until his foot slipped off the side of the rocky ledge. He cried out shortly before Rick hooked an arm around his ribs, hugging him tightly to his side. Rick had used his free hands to work the portal gun out of his coat pocket, and now he shot a portal on the ground in front of them, its perimeter extending beyond the edges of the narrow path. With Morty secured at his side, Rick did little more than step into the portal.

Rick hit the garage floor, falling to one knee, which was at least more fashionable than Morty, whose legs kicked out from under him and forced him onto his butt, metal pyramid still clutched by both hands. Rick rose to his feet and extended a hand to Morty, which he took into his own, letting Rick pull him up.

“I was asking for this,” Rick said, taking the pyramid from Morty’s hand.

Morty’s face heated, and he replied a small, “O-oh.” Then, attempting to shake off the simple embarrassment, he asked, “OK, so now you tell me, right? What’s this thing for, a-and why did we have to go to _Hell_ for you to use it?”

“It wasn’t Hell, Morty,” Rick said, setting the pyramid on his workbench. The device was made of a dull, gray metal. Two of its three sides, not including the base, were each inlaid with a circle of dim, blue light that surrounded the places where, when pressed simultaneously, activated the device. “It was a- a demonic dimension. A dimension occupied by demons.”

“Sure sounds like Hell.”

“And each demon has a different ability, Morty. A different _power_. Real amazing stuff. And the one we caged is gonna be really useful to my work. She has a- a real powerful ability. The one that was chasing us, that was her brother.” Rick pulled his flask from his coat pocket and took a drink. He belched. “We really pissed him off.”

“Boy. That kinda makes me feel bad, Rick.”

“Don’t.” Rick slipped the flask back into his coat pocket. “Demons have strict loyalties. And I don’t just mean with family. Some will chase you down if you don’t offer the right mixture of dirt before speaking to 'em.”

Rick emphasized the concept of being chased down by lunging at Morty and clamping hooked fingers on his shoulders, tugging him roughly and causing him to stumble. Catching his footing, Morty laughed and shrugged Rick off.

Rick grinned. He was fond of knocking Morty off his guard and watching him grow flustered. Those reactions were endearing and often made him think of a puppy. Thinking of endearing in terms of puppies was safe. Sometimes, when Rick succumbed to his urges to tease Morty – to prod and grab at the boy or say things that were sure to make him blush – he thought of it like a mental exercise. Try to get a taste without going too far. Rick wasn’t good at moderation, but if he just thought “puppy” he figured he could indulge himself a little.

Now Morty was rubbing one of his arms at the elbow and looking to the ground, so Rick gave his head a quick, messy rub. “C’mon,” he said, heading toward the connecting kitchen door. “Let’s get something to eat.”

“Wait. You didn’t tell me what power the demon you caught in your triangle has.”

Rick turned to him, sucking at the corner of his mouth. “She eats thoughts.” He watched Morty’s eyes go wide. “Ideas. Memories. Dreams. I-if there’s something you don’t want in your head anymore, she’s the demon you summon to take care of it.”

Morty’s lips pursed, holding a question he was wary to ask. “Is it… D-d-do you have a thought you want it to eat?”

“Pff. You think I went through all that trouble because I don’t have enough control over my own mind? If I don’t wanna think about something, Morty, I don’t think about it. I’m not one of those idiots who obsesses over things. No. You’re thinking too small. I’m gonna extract that ability and sell it. Imagine it, Morty! Maybe it’ll be a pill. A- a serum you inject into your veins. That cage holds a well of idea-devouring juice, and I bet I can make the supply endless!”

Rick moved back to Morty and rested an arm around his shoulders, turning them both toward the door. He let his fingers play with the hair behind Morty’s ear, and as they stepped into the kitchen, Morty replied with a distracted, “That’s great, Rick.”

 

That night, Morty sat up in his bed, legs stretched out, staring at his hands in his lap. He’d been ruminating, hardly pulled from the task even when Rick pushed his door open and leaned in. He was, however, pricked with a bit of irritation at Rick’s refusal to knock more than half the time.

“Hey Morty,” Rick said with a smile, “I’m gonna watch a movie. Wanna join me?”

Morty returned Rick’s smile with a small one of his own. “Oh. Uh, I’m pretty tired, Rick. I think I’m gonna conk out early tonight.”

Rick’s pleasant mood deflated. “It’s Friday night. Look, I don’t mean to show my age, but w-what’s with you kids staying locked in your rooms all weekend?”

Morty scowled now. “I spent most of the day in a Hell dimension. I think I deserve some time to myself.”

“Oh, time to yourself. Is that how you wanna say it?” Rick made an obscene gesture that caused Morty’s frown to deepen, opening his mouth in a silent scoff. Rick belched aloofly as he turned away, and just before he shut the door he muttered, “Whatever.”

Sitting in the dark living room, Rick’s movie companion that night was the thick whiskey bottle he planted on his thigh after every gulp. He rolled the base's edge against his leg, feeling its weight against his muscle as the TV screen flashed with explosions. With a snort, Rick remembered Morty’s question. If he planned to use the demon’s power on himself. His mind could certainly use a hosing down, but Rick knew better than to try to erase bad thoughts. The suckers who would buy his product would all, inevitably, encounter the very problems that had caused those bad thoughts to begin with. The littlest trigger might cause their eaten memories to come coursing back. Anyhow, Rick was who he was because of the trials he’d suffered. Bitter thoughts marinated in bitter liquids reminded Rick of the complexities of his mind. He allowed himself the right to be proud of that much. His mind was complex. Probably the most complex mind on Earth.

He took another drink in honor of the idiots he shared a species with, and the movie droned on. From the couch, he didn’t hear when Morty passed through the dining room and into the kitchen and back again. Nor did he hear, several minutes later, the loud thud of Morty hitting the floor upstairs. The cinematic gun fight drowned everything else out.

The movie ended a little over an hour later, and Rick retreated to the garage. It was time to study his caged demon. Time to figure out what would be required to extract and duplicate its ability. Rick was more than a little drunk, so when he didn’t find the pyramid on his workbench, he began to dig around. It was when he didn’t find it on his shelf that he decided no, he hadn’t forgotten where he’d put it. Somebody came in and took it.

Annoyance sobered Rick a degree, and he threw open the door to Jerry’s study. The words, “I thought I told you not to touch my shit,” faltered before they began. Jerry wasn’t there. Rick growled. He wouldn’t have thought to suspect Morty. What reason would he have to steal a thought-eating demon? Then again, Rick figured Morty’s thoughts were at least a little more complex than Jerry’s. So he made his way upstairs and knocked on Morty’s door. When he got no answer, he opened it, and like before, his prepared words of “Why bother knocking if you’re not even gonna answer?” had no reason to come out.

Morty lay sprawled, face down on the floor and unresponsive. His limbs were limp, one arm shoved under himself in a way that made Rick’s shoulder ache sympathetically.

Rick called Morty’s name, quickly crouching and turning the boy over in his arms. He was like a rag doll, his head falling back. His eyes were open only slightly, and when Rick lifted his head, he saw their emptiness. A cold drip of panic trickled down Rick’s spine. Quickly, he checked Morty’s pulse at his neck, and feeling it, he let out a groaning sigh.

“Come on, Morty. Wake up,” Rick ordered, and he shook the boy’s shoulder. Rick shook his head, his eyes landing on the pyramid cage under Morty’s bed. It must have tumbled out of his hand when he blacked out, Rick figured as he laid Morty back down on the floor and crawled over him to grab the device. He sat back down by Morty’s side and inspected the pyramid. The lights that were a dim blue were now yellow, indicating that the cage contained more than before.

The meaning was clear to Rick. Morty must have been trying to interact with the demon. But only Rick knew how to do so through the confines of the cage. Even if Morty had managed to activate the device, he didn't have authorization to remove content. As such, instead of the demon coming out when he'd opened the cage, it appeared that she had somehow pulled him in. Or rather, pulled in his consciousness.

Rick left Morty’s body on its back in the floor before rushing the pyramid cage down to the garage. He had to go in after Morty, but simply sending his consciousness wouldn't suffice. He entered the garage, prepared to set to work on modifying the cage. To make it larger so that he could enter it without compromising its security. But by the time he sat the cage on his workbench, the lights had turned a deep green. Less full, though still more than the demon alone as the blue had indicated. This could have meant a number of things, but the one Rick feared was that Morty’s consciousness was being consumed. There was no time to modify the cage. Holding it over the workbench, Rick pressed both buttons and circled his middle finger on the panel at its base. He sweated as he was transferred, mind and body, into the cage.

With Rick gone, the pyramid fell onto the workbench. Its lights burned a hot red.

 

The tingling of the transfer subsided almost instantly along with the blurring of Rick’s vision. He blinked at his surroundings. Morty’s room. Or rather, a recreation of Morty’s room, and from what Rick could tell looking about, it was a rather accurate recreation. Aside from Rick, the room was unoccupied. The lights were on and gave the room a vibe of safety and privacy. The visuals and vibe must have been pulled from Morty’s memories of the place. Rick figured that the demon was using Morty’s mind to alter the appearance of the cage.

“OK,” Rick called out rather nonchalantly, turning slowly in the middle of the room. “Where you at, Morty? Where – urrp – where are you keeping my grandson’s mind, bitch?”

Neither teenage boy nor mind-eating demon responded, and Rick frowned a deep frown as he reached for his flask pocket only to find it empty. He snarled. He needed his flask. This incident had been all too sobering. His hands desperately patted and searched his coat pockets. No flask. No portal gun. Even in the pockets of his slacks he found no wallet or keys. Then another icy drip of panic touched his spine. His watches, all of them, were gone from his wrists. Including the watch that was his way out of the cage. He would have to find the fail-safe exit, but with the insides of the cage altered by the demon’s hold on Morty’s consciousness, there was no guessing where the fail-safe exit was, or even what it might look like.

“Well, it’s just your room,” Rick said, walking to Morty’s desk and pulling open the top drawer. “How hard can it be to find everything? W-where are you, Morty? You shrink down or something?”

The top drawer was empty. He opened the next, also empty. He knew Morty kept a good amount of junk in these drawers. He’d seen him pull out notebooks and CDs and pencils. Markers, candy, elastic bands. But here they were all empty.

“What, i-is your brain so small you couldn’t… couldn’t remember what belongs in your room?” He crossed to Morty’s bed where his laptop sat open, facing away. “What about you, demon? Prisoner. You have Morty? Think he can use the fail-safe and get you out of here? Don’t be ridiculous. You’ve seen how empty his brain is. Kid can’t even remember to change his shirt half the time.”

Rick turned the laptop to himself. There was no sound, but Rick wasn’t surprised for very long by the imagery taking up the whole of the screen: a simple pornographic image of a smooth, white backside with a ruddy prick sliding in and out repeatedly. The receiver’s lower back dimples were visible at the bottom of the screen, and just a peek of the giver’s pudgy belly came and went from the top. On either side of the large, pale ass were peeks of the pink bed sheets below. The video remained the same, not like a looping .gif but rather like an eternally continuous video. From the downward angle, it was hard to tell for sure that the penetration was anal rather than vaginal, and realizing this, Rick also noted that he wasn’t certain whether the recipient was male or female.

“Wow. Amazing, Morty,” Rick said, now more to himself. “Is this a memory you were trying to get rid of? You jacked off to anal, and now you’re questioning your sexuality?” And a bit louder, he added, “Was it worth getting your mind grabbed up by a demon, Morty?”

He hit escape, then double clicked. But the video continued. He’d hoped the laptop might have held Morty’s mind, or perhaps the fail-safe. But it was just a projection, it seemed. Something from Morty’s mind that the demon had formed into something more physical. Rick rolled his eyes at the image and scanned the rest of the room. There wasn’t much left to explore. All drawers were bare, and the books on the shelf were stuck like stage props. All that was really left to check was…

Rick walked to the door. It would be a pain if it actually opened. If he actually had to search the whole house for Morty and the fail-safe exit. He grabbed the knob, turned it, and with a grimace he opened the door.

This was not the Smiths' upstairs hallway. Rick found himself stepping out into a long hallway lined with plain wooden doors on both sides. The wallpaper was a very yellowed white covered in a repeating pattern of connecting blue diamond outlines that had faded and been left very faint. Except Rick knew better than to believe the aged appearance. The inside of the cage didn’t look like this. This was, like Morty’s room, some projection of Morty’s consciousness that the demon was using, most likely to screw with Rick as punishment for trapping her.

The floor was covered in a cream carpet with red-brown ornate designs, and fluorescent tubes lit the hallway in random patches, broken up by sections where the lights were blown or the light fixture was missing entirely, leaving short wires to hang from the ceiling. The place looked like a sleazy hotel hallway. As far as Rick knew, Morty had never actually been in such a hotel. Rick had taken him to many bizarre places, but never such a dingy human place. But he was sure the boy had seen enough movies and cop shows to be aware of places like this.

Except Rick didn’t know what TV program showed sleazy hotels with quite this many doors, or with hallways that stretched damn near a hundred yards, only to intersect with another hallway, presumably of similar ridiculous length and ridiculous amount of doors. Rick grabbed at his hair with both hands.

“A-a-are you fucking kidding me, Morty?” he called out. “You’re gonna put me through this shit?” He stepped to door across the hall from Morty’s, and quieter, he said, “Guess I’ll just check _all these rooms_.” It was becoming apparent to Rick that he had grown accustom to Morty’s company. He couldn’t seem to make a move without trying to inform him. It was pathetic really.

Rick grabbed the knob, but not only did it not turn, the door didn’t jiggle against the jamb. In fact, upon further inspection, the tiny crack that separated the door from the frame was nothing more than a black line. Trailing his fingers across it, Rick realized that the door was flush with, and not at all disconnected from, the wood that framed it. With a grumble, Rick set to work with his new job of checking door knobs. He may not have so many rooms to search, but grabbing and jiggling doorknobs was still stupidly tedious.

Several doors down, the monotonous imagery was broken by a framed picture in the space between two doors. Rick inspected, but the image made little sense. The paper it was printed on was probably once white but had yellowed like everything else in the hall. The image itself was a simple triangular outline printed in black. Going up the triangle were horizontal lines that separated it into four sections. The bottom section had been streaked across with a highlighter. The third section was fatter than the others, the top and bottom lines being spaced further apart than the other sections. And the fourth section was the tip. If the image was supposed to be some sort of informational diagram, Rick wasn’t getting it. Which kind of really pissed him off.

When the frame didn’t come off the wall, Rick left it to return to his door task. After all, staring at a picture of a triangle when he could be actively searching would be a waste of time. He was more than halfway down that first hallway now, and just when he was starting to wonder if any of these doors actually mattered – if he should have been dashing down the other hallways instead – he grabbed a knob that gave. The door creaked, opening into a dark room.

He stepped in, hand skidding along the wall for a light switch while the hallway light fanned out. The small, square room was totally bare, the walls and floor a plain gray in the shadows. And irrationally, Rick shivered at the strangeness of it. His hand wiped blindly at the wall, but he couldn’t seem to remove his widened eyes from their desperate attempts to adjust to the darkness of the room.

Finally Rick forced himself to look away from the center of the room, but he found no switch on the wall, and turning back, his heart jumped so hard it knocked some wind out of him. From the ceiling now hung a large, lumpy sack. One half sagged lower than the other, and the whole thing stretched down like loose flesh, its contents reaching for the ground. The appearance was so absurd that Rick felt foolish for having been startled.

“Is this the nut sack room or something?” Rick asked, still imagining that Morty might be able to hear him. “Is this the room in the- the deep confines of your psyche where you locked away your affinity for balls?”

The nut sack thing dropped to the floor like a giant dollop of melted candle wax. The fleshy sack melded over the two large balls within, looking indeed very much like a pair of bulbous testicles, the way they'd look plopped onto a desk. Except these were on the floor and stood as high as Rick’s waist. The inner meat rolled forward like oblong wheels, rolling the whole package toward Rick. He stepped backwards into the hall, stopping in the middle as the thing rolled halfway out the doorway. The light fell on its maroon skin, and the way it crawled over the inner meat, like a shifting sea of wrinkled and taut, made Rick’s skin crawl similarly. But whatever this thing was, he reminded himself, it was just a projection.

“Boy Morty,” he said lowly, trying to fight the goosebumps that were rising on the back of his neck. “This is some real art house imagery you’ve cooked up. Gotta- gotta hand it to you. Credit where credit is due, right?”

He wondered partially if the giant testicle thing might respond in Morty’s voice, reproachful of Rick’s mockery of the form his consciousness had taken. But the thing did not speak. From underneath, shoving its way out from between the two sections of inner meat, came a trio of fat, metallic tentacles ridged by countless segments that allowed them complete flexibility. They flaked rust that scraped against the wrinkly flesh as they pushed forward, making Rick’s groin ache per his interpretation of it. Still, Rick didn’t feel the need to avoid the searching tentacles. Not until one went rigid and shot out toward him, hitting him square in the gut and knocking him, dazed, against the wall.

One of the faux knobs jammed into the back of Rick’s ribs, and grabbing at his side, he fell to his knees. He gasped for air, blinking the blur out of his eyes only to see the other two tentacles poised for attack while the first wiggled against the floor. Quickly, Rick dove sideways, and the two tentacles crashed into the wall. Rick scrambled to his feet, bolting for the turn at the end of the hall. He didn’t make it far before a tentacle hooked around his right ankle.

Rick hit the floor on his chin, clamping his teeth painfully. His ankle felt crushed in the grip of the fat tentacle, but it wasn’t pulling him back. He turned onto his back and watched as the thing rolled toward him, the ends of the remaining two tentacles scraping at the walls rapidly like feelers. The sound was like knives on dinner plates, and the oblong meat of the monster made it roll in a bumbling manner.

“Monster.” Yes, Rick had no qualms with calling this thing a monster. It should have just been a projection. The demon shouldn’t have had this power to manifest the ideas it ate. And yet here they were. And Rick didn’t even have his pistol.

Rick looked around desperately. On the wall, just behind and beside the monster, was a white-framed, horizontal glass case with a bright red fire axe inside. Had it been there before? The doors on either side of it were further apart than any of the other doors to make room for it, and Rick was too confident in his observational skills to believe he’d missed it. But the idea that he had overlooked it didn’t even annoy him as much as the idea that the damn thing just happened to appear there.

As the monster bumbled closer, Rick got to his feet, one ankle still trapped painfully by the tentacle. He waited, and when the monster stopped five feet away and poised its other two tentacles for attack, Rick stomped hard across the ridges of the one at his ankle. The partitions warped under his foot, loosening the grip and allowing Rick to slip out. Almost simultaneously, the other two tentacles punched, and Rick lurched forward, gripping the monster's stretchy skin, digging the toe of his shoe into the meat, and vaulting himself over the body of the monster.

He landed on his hands and knees on the other side, then quickly rose, ran forward, and smashed the emergency glass with his elbow. He grabbed the axe, ready to strike from behind. But now the tentacles were poking their way out from under the beast and toward Rick again. The thing had no front or back. Rick furrowed his brow and hefted the fire axe. Not wanting to give the tentacles time to prepare, he struck the creature right between its giant balls.

The skin did not break. Under the blade of the axe, it stretched nearly to the floor, but when Rick pulled the axe back, the skin merely rose gently back in place. One of the tentacles had extended itself high over Rick, preparing to club him down. But Rick gripped both ends of the axe handle and shot it up above himself, and the metallic tentacle, three times as thick as the axe handle, crashed against it.

Flakes of rust rained down on Rick’s face as the tentacle dragged against the axe handle. He broke away, stepping back and shaking the rust out of his face. The same tentacle recovered and prepared to strike forward. Giving it no time, Rick hacked it, splitting it down the front and cutting through tangles of wires.

The monster screamed a scream like old gate hinges. It had no mouth, but it screamed. Rick didn’t give it time to prepare its other tentacles, which were busy scrawling across the walls as before. He threw his weight at the tentacle on his left, smashing the axe head into it and pinning it to the wall.

The tentacle wriggled as if in pain while Rick tried to drive the axe head deeper through the mass of wiring inside. The more he pushed, the more the tentacle and the axe slid down the wall. It was then that Rick noticed the top of the axe handle, where it poked through the slot of the axe head, and saw that it was topped with a raised image of what looked like an oval-bodied insect.

When the tentacle slid down so far, Rick rose his left foot and stomped it against the back of the axe head, driving it deeper.

Finally, and with a satisfying crunch, the tentacle went limp. Rick put his foot on it as he pulled the axe out. Ignoring the third tentacle as it curled in pain, he hefted the axe and aimed for the meat within the flesh. Chopping the left ball was like pushing a butter knife through a hard-boiled egg. The monster screamed again, and Rick went for the right ball, cleaving it in half as well.

The scream ended abruptly. The remaining tentacle fell limp, and the sack, which still had no break or tear, deflated over the chopped inner meat.

Rick panted, dragging the axe out of the bed of flesh. His right ankle throbbed, so he put his weight on his left. He’d not even noticed the pain while fighting, but now he was all too aware of it. He reached for his flask pocket and was harshly reminded that he had nothing on him except the clothes he wore and the axe he’d found. Or been given.

At any rate, as if being caged with a demon wasn’t enough, now there were bumbling ball sack monsters to deal with. And he still had no idea where Morty was, or the fail-safe exit. He had to find them. Had to find Morty before the demon ate-

Don’t think about it.

With a decisive huff, Rick gripped the fire axe in both hands and stepped around the monster’s corpse, ready to return to his tedious task of checking doors. Then he looked down the hallway, and at the end of the hallway, under a flickering florescent light, was Morty.

At least, he was pretty sure it was Morty. The head was hidden by a black curtain, which hung over his head like a box, covering everything above his shoulders. The curtain was held up by four skinny, metal poles that framed Morty’s body like a museum exhibit, each leg connected to one another by rungs near Morty’s ankles. But Rick didn’t need to see his head. It was definitely Morty. Same small, skinny body in his same jeans and yellow T-shirt. Rick called to him.

“Morty! Morty, we have to get out of here! I don’t know w-what the hell you thought you were doing, but you can give me your piss poor excuses after we get the fuck out of this place.”

Rick ran down the hall, fire axe rocking from side to side in his hands. Morty took a step down the other hall, though not out of view, and the legs that held the curtain followed after his step on tiny wheels.

“Morty!” Rick called, and Morty stopped mid-step. The metal legs rocked forward then back as well.

Rick slowed to a jog as he neared, but it was a mistake. Morty’s heel came off the ground, as though he were uncertain of his steps. His foot rocked on its toes, then lifted from the floor at last. He walked down the other hall, the curtain wheeling along. Morty didn’t touch the frame or the curtain, and yet it rolled with him, wheels giving tiny sounds of _squick-squeak squick-squeak_.

“Shit,” Rick spat, sprinting again. “Morty!” He rounded the corner, hearing a door slam. But he didn’t see Morty, and he didn’t see which door had slammed. Which of the many, many doors. In this hallway, two sacks hung from the ceiling.


	2. Vertical Bars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Rick voice) Chapter 2! Boom!

Rick didn’t want to have to do this. Both of these hanging flesh sacks looked just as large as the one he’d just killed, and one alone had messed him up pretty bad. His right ankle throbbed with every step.

Too many doors lined the walls, and Rick wouldn’t know which ones were real or fake without testing them. And even then, he wouldn’t know which one Morty had gone through versus which only held more trouble. Much to his disgust, Rick found himself nervous to move any closer. How many doors could he check before disturbing the monsters? The second was quite a ways further down the hall, but the first was only a few doors down.

Rick mentally calculated how quickly he might be able to smack-test some doorknobs before slipping under the first monster, putting him in the cross-fire between the two while he checked the doors between them. Then, how quickly he could chop through, or vault over, the second monster before being pummeled beyond repair. But maybe his odds of escape weren’t so slim. One door was different from rest. A blood-red door not unlike the fire axe he held in both hands.

It seemed too convenient, and not particularly realistic, that the door he needed just so happened to be the blaring red one. But the fire axe had been pretty convenient as well, aside from the fact that he’d had to get the wind knocked out of him and his ankle crushed to acquire it. And like the axe, this red door would not be easily accessible. It was carefully located on the right wall in the space between the two, what Rick was calling ball sack monsters in his head.

“They’re basically ball sacks with metal dicks,” Rick said quietly to himself, trying to steady his nerves as he readied his legs for a sprint, axe gripped. Maybe he could evade them both. “Doesn’t take a psychology degree to figure that one out, Morty.”

He ran for it. He hugged the right wall, ready to snag that doorknob. But Rick didn’t expect the nearer ball sack monster to sense when to drop. And the moment Rick was beneath it, he felt the weight of its right meatball hitting the back of his head, shoving it painfully forward, thudding down on the entire span of his shoulders and back, and knocking him flat to the floor.

Rick grunted out. Only his head and the bottom of his calves poked out from under the monster. Both of his arms were crushed to his chest, and the axe handle pressed painfully against the bone of one of his wrists. But he didn’t have time to focus on the claustrophobic pressure that made breathing practically impossible, for he could see in his peripheral the three metal tentacles pushing their way out from under the monster.

With great effort, Rick got his palms flat on the floor and, huffing rapidly, lifted his chest barely two inches off the dirty carpet. Immediately, he slapped his palm on the axe handle, shoving it forward just before the monster’s weight shoved him back down. Now with the axe and one arm free, Rick’s mind worked quickly on the next best move.

A tentacle shot for Rick’s head, and with reflexes or luck, Rick pulled the axe back along the floor, getting it in just the right spot to cause the tip of the tentacle to punch onto the axe blade, gashing open the tip. Unfortunately, his aim hadn’t been quite precise enough to create the image of a urethra, as the slit’s edges were jagged, it gaped a bit too much, and it curved at the bottom. But seeing as he had no audience, Rick figured he could live with the missed opportunity.

The tentacle shuttered back a bit, and Rick dropped the axe. Before the metal limb could retreat further, he shoved his arm inside the new opening. The jagged edges caught his coat sleeve, shoving both layers of sleeve to his elbow. His claw-hooked fingers tore into a web-like mess of wires, and he grabbed what he could. The tentacle pulled away, effectively pulling Rick out from under the monster's body. He tried to grab the axe with his left hand as he was dragged past, but he missed and was lifted toward the ceiling.

Rick released his hold on the wires and fell, the jagged metal scraping the length of his inner arm. He landed beside where the other two tentacles were scrawling on the carpet, and he quickly stepped over them, taking up the axe in a left-handed stance. He wouldn’t waste time and allow the tentacles to strike again now that he knew what to do. Without hesitation, Rick chopped the right meatball (now on his left). The tentacles curled as the monster screamed its rusty-hinges scream, and Rick silenced it with another swoop down on the remaining ball. As before, the crawling skin of its sack stilled and deflated, draped dead over the cleaved meat.

Rick took a deep breath, but his relieved release was halted by the knives-on-dinner-plates shriek. He didn’t have to turn around to know what it was, but he did. Lumbering toward him was the second ball sack monster, its tentacles drawing invisible cursive on the walls and doors. He was just two doors away from the red door.

“Fuck. This.”

Rick bolted for the red door. He grabbed the knob, turned it, and cracked the door just enough to slip through before pulling it firmly closed behind him.

 

Darkness.

The room smelled sour with chemicals, and the door filled its frame so completely that not a single drop of the hallway’s light bled through. Rick released his hold on the doorknob, and with his first step, his left foot kicked something hollow that slid on the floor and sent something clattering on the wall only a few feet away from his head.

So the room was narrow. And probably devoid of ball sack monsters if the sound didn’t send anything falling to the floor to attack. Rick felt along that left wall – smooth, coated cinder block – until his hand came across a wooden pole. Sliding down it, he determined that what he had kicked was a mop bucket, and what had clattered was this mop handle. He searched the wall for a light switch, but all his hand felt were more handles. More cleaning equipment, probably.

He found the back corner quickly, proving the room to be quite small. The back wall was bare, aside from the opposite corner where he found a tall, metal pillar: a filing cabinet. And beside that, a table. On the table, Rick’s hands came down on scattered stacks of papers. Then his fingers slid into something wet, and he recoiled, hurriedly wiping the substance on the side of his coat. He'd barely stepped back when a small chain overhead knock against the back of his head, and reaching back, he grabbed the little chain and pulled.

Blue light filled the broom closet. The overhead light socket dangled by its wires, which disappeared through a small, crudely carved hole in the foam ceiling tile. Now he could see the desk, covered on the left in piles of paper and on the right in bottles of cleansers. The liquid Rick had touched was merely an overturned bottle of Windex. Most of the cleanser bottles were wide and topped with spray handles, but he found a small, capped bottle of ammonia on the desk as well, full and still sealed. On a whim, Rick slid it into one of his coat pockets.

In the calm of the small, blue-lit closet, Rick became aware for the first time that the room wasn’t entirely silent. He could hear a small, muffled thrumming. A distant, tinny sound like some sort of machinery, but Rick didn’t see any machines in here. Perhaps the sound wasn’t even in the same room, and annoyingly Rick found himself growing concerned that the source of the rhythmic hum was in the next room over, preparing to break through the wall to attack him. Maybe it would have a mouth of churning gears, and Morty’s form would be thoroughly crushed and ground between them because Rick had chosen the wrong door through which to look for him.

Rick’s stomach ached, so he stopped thinking about that. But the sound continued, and leaning over the desk to listen closely through the wall, where the sound seemed closest, his hand knocked a sloping pile of papers to the side, uncovering, to his surprise, a small boombox. One of those CD player-tape deck combos with rounded edges. Knocking the papers out of the way did more than reveal the source of the sound. It also seemed to increase the volume, not to any obnoxious level but certainly more than a mere pile of paper could have concealed.

He recognized the gentle if not hypnotic music, the titular chorus being sung by The Police: “Don’t stand. Don’t stand so. Don’t stand so close to me.” A small bit of something glossy poked out from the top of one of the cassette doors, and with curiosity, Rick pressed the eject button. It clicked down, and the panel sprung open. What he'd seen poking out had been the corner of a laminated tag connected to a flat key. Rick fiddled the tag in his fingers, pulling the key into his hand, and backing up under the blue light bulb, he read the tag. On a black background with an electric green border and text, block lettering spelled “THE TOWER”.

BAM! The red door bowed inward before easing straight again. BAM! With a start, Rick backed up uselessly to the room’s back wall. He slipped the key into one of his coat pockets and readied his axe. Fighting the ball sack monster in such a small space would be damn near futile, and Rick cursed himself for staying in this dead end broom closet for so long. He cursed himself for the way his heart was pounding in his chest and the way his throat practically burned with fear. He was stuck. He was going to get himself killed. Morty was going to get killed in here. His consciousness devoured, only a brain-dead husk would be left on his bedroom floor. BAM! Maybe he was already gone.

Don’t think about it.

But you have to think. Think of a way out.

The boombox erupted with sound, the music drilling into Rick’s eardrums and sparking an annoyed rage. The sound must have been what triggered the monster. Rick was just about to swing his axe down on the player when he caught sight of the power cord trailing off the front of the desk, down toward the floor where it gradually turned a bright red as it went out of sight under the desk’s leg space. It shouldn’t have been a clue. Not in any other world Rick had been to would he rely on a color to lead him. And yet he found himself all but diving to the linoleum floor.

Getting on his knees, Rick followed the trail of the cord to where it traveled to the wall. But the cord didn’t lead to a power outlet. Instead it sat limp under a cloth against the wall. Rick crawled forward and tore the cloth away, revealing a small, rectangular opening in the wall. Beyond it was not the neighboring room, but a narrow concrete space, and although it was cast in shadows by its own tall walls, it was bright enough to see, the fresh smell of grass and dirt drifting from above.

Another loud thud was followed by a crack, and Rick’s legs were pelted with splintered wood. He didn’t bother looking back at the intruder. With the axe gripped in one hand, he crawled. Grabbing and kicking, he pulled himself through the small opening. It was barely wide enough for his skinny form, and he had to squeeze one shoulder through at a time, letting the frame scrape him at the ribs, but he pushed through. A tentacle punched into the floor just behind one of his feet, where he'd only just moved his foot away from, and the metal appendage would have certainly shattered his bones had he not.

To Rick’s left, a steep series of steps ascended into dim evening light, and he struggled to turn himself halfway through the opening so that he could, with palm and knuckles smacking concrete, clamber up the steps that led him out of the narrow little stairwell.

Soon, Rick was climbing out and onto cold grass. With heart pounding, he rolled onto his back, then raised his head and saw the towering brick wall of the building he’d climbed out of. He must have been behind the rooms now. For a moment, Rick watched the top of the stairwell with bated breath, his right hand gripping the fire axe. But nothing came through, so he dropped his head back down on the grass and let himself breathe.

He was outside. Well, he couldn’t have actually been outside. But he was somewhere that looked like outside. The sky was overcast with thick, gray clouds. The grass caused his still-exposed inner arm to itch and burn, and he lifted it over his face. Three puffy, pink lines had been raked down the length of his inner arm by the jagged metal of the monster’s tentacle, starting just below the elbow and traveling to the wrinkles of his wrist.

He sat up, pulling his shirt and coat sleeves back down and grabbing the axe before getting to his feet. He hadn’t looked around yet. He’d been too relieved about escaping the monster and the confines of the nonsensical hallway that he’d not even thought to look around for danger here. He did so now.

He stood in a small courtyard, about forty-five square meters and covered in well-trimmed grass, surrounded on all sides by brick walls. Rick figured the walls were all part of the hotel-type place he’d just been in, although he couldn’t remember ever seeing a sleazy hotel with a courtyard like this. Both side walls were lined by a few well-spaced stone benches with little decorative bushes between them. In the center of the courtyard was a large statue of the same gray stone: on a tall block platform, a ferocious male lion bared his teeth low between his big paws. His backside was raised high in the air, his tail lifted even higher with the tuft of fur on the tip bent out like a flag on a pole. The ground beneath the statue was covered by a slab of concrete, presumably the same dimensions as the bottom of the base, which Rick only knew because the statue was cocked off center just enough to reveal a corner of the slab beneath.

Aside from the stairwell he'd come up from, there were no doors on any of the walls. Well, not at ground level at any rate.

The interesting thing about the wall opposite Rick, the wall past the lion’s ass, was that it didn’t reach as high as the other four walls. It looked to be about fourteen or fifteen feet tall, and at its top, made of stone instead of brick, was a large cylindrical structure topped with parapets like a castle tower. It was at the base of that stone tower that Rick spotted a small gate. More of a door made of black bars really.

Rick pulled the key out of his pocket and read that electric green lettering again. THE TOWER. “Maybe you’re in there,” he said quietly, barely above a whisper, before pocketing the key. He was definitely being led somewhere. He hoped it was Morty leading him and not the demon.

Rick had already thought of a way to reach the tower gate, but he didn’t know if he could manage it. But he had to try. He’d wasted enough time. So he walked toward the lion statue. The block platform came to his chest, but as long and tall as it was, the statue wasn’t too terribly wide. If he could get it against the wall, maybe he could climb it and reach the gate.

“Hate to just take advantage of you like this, dawg,” Rick said to the lion, setting the axe on the ground. He stepped up to the front of the stone block. “Pruh-probably shouldn’t call a cat ‘dawg’ huh?” Rick planted both palms on the stone block and, with all his might, pushed against the statue.

It didn’t budge. Of course it didn’t. It was huge, and Rick was a skinny man, much better at taking a hit than giving one. He could be quick with his attacks and do well in a fight, but when it came to brute strength, well, he’d always been skin and bones and gristle.

But maybe that _wasn’t_ all his might. Hunching, Rick pressed his shoulder and palm to the statue and, with a deep breath, pushed his weight into it. He grunted, and his shoes slid back, digging up grass and dirt as he walked them back in place. He grumbled, “You seein’ this, Morty? Getting a real- real kick outta this?” He gritted his teeth and pushed and growled.

 _Click_.

The statue scooted forward. Rick huffed and pushed again. Still with great effort, the statue slowly began to scoot, revealing more of the concrete slab beneath it. A few inches in from either side of the slab were two black rails that traveled longways up the slab’s length. Running between the rails, rather than concrete, was a grating of horizontal bars that covered an opening too deep and dark to inspect. Not that Rick was interested in inspecting whatever drainage was below anyhow. The bottom of the statue must have been fitted to the railing, because pushing, while still tiresome, had become much more reasonable.

As Rick pushed, he made sure to place his feet carefully on the grating, for the bars were far apart enough that all it would take was a sideways stepping foot or a downward pointing toe to send him slipping down, and he really didn’t need a broken tibia right now. His right ankle was enough of a nuisance.

It wasn’t long before a thick, foul odor wafted into his nose. He forcefully blew out and continued on. Then something bit into his sore ankle. Rick yelled out in pain and tried to pull his foot up, but it was drawn back down, hitting the grating with a hard clang. Looking down, he saw what had ensnared him. Coming out of the grate were strands and strands of thick, black hair, all tangled and matted together. They were wet and clumpy, speckled with foam and gunk like hair pulled from a sink’s drain trap. And worst of all, they were tightly wound around Rick’s wounded ankle.

He tried again to jerk his foot up, but the hair yanked him back down. He hissed. The axe was on the ground behind him, so he stepped with his free foot toward the edge of the concrete slab. Another glob of nasty drainage hair struck from below the grate, catching his good ankle and sending Rick sprawling to the ground. His palms skidded on the grass and dirt he’d kicked up, and the odor from below the grate filled him, making him gag. Fighting and kicking against the yanking hairs, Rick was forced to crawl forward on hands alone until he was flat on his belly. Reaching out as far as he could, he clawed at the axe handle, just managing to scrabble it into his hand.

Using the axe like a cane, Rick pulled himself upright, but the hairs that were tangled around his right ankle gave another angry pull, and his foot slipped toe down, falling fast between the bars of the grate and sending him back down. The hairs pulled his thigh between the bars, which pinched painfully.

Rick couldn’t let this take all his attention. He had his other ankle to deal with, and the hairs ensnaring it were also pulling, hoping his toe would slip so that they could pull that leg down as well, working together to squeeze him through the grating like meat through a grinder.

Grunting, Rick slid his left foot in front of himself, sole flat on the grating, and lifted the axe up beside his shoulder. _Whack whack whack_. It took a few swings to hack away the nasty, matted hairs, leaving only a ring of it tied snug around the bottom of his pant leg.

As if taking offense to his escape, the hair around his right ankle gave a renewed heave, and Rick’s right thigh was slowly and painfully squeezed fully through the bars. Rick’s face contorted in pain as one of his balls mashed into the grating. He put his freed foot down on the concrete on the other side of the railing and, with the aid of the axe again, managed to pull himself up to a standing position. The hairs yanked and yanked at his sore leg, and Rick yanked back. He had to get that foot out of the grate.

“Fuck you, you motherfucking,” Rick panted, playing a very strained tug-o-war, his right foot merely shivering in place right below the bars. If he went slack for one moment, the hairs would haul him back down to his ass. “Nasty ass f-fucking swamp muff!”

With that, Rick gave his foot a hardy jerk. The moment he got his toes above the grating, he turned them up. The hairs tugged, and his foot hit flat and hard on the grating. Rick panted, his body shaking at the effort he’d exerted. But relaxing had to wait, and sucking up as much energy as he could, Rick lifted the axe and _whack whack_ the axe head clanged against the metal as he chopped the stringy netting of hair from his ankle.

Putting both feet on the concrete outside the rails, Rick stood astride over the grate. Panting, he stared down into the black abyss where the hairs had retreated. He didn’t have time to be gawking like he was. He looked at the statue and groaned. He still had to move it, and he was really, really running out of energy.

But it didn’t matter if he hurt. It didn’t matter if he was exhausted. He had a mission. With no other option than to stand on the grating again, Rick got at the statue once more, shoving it with his shoulder and somehow finding it in himself to keep the heavy thing moving on its rails. He wasn’t free and clear of the nasty hairs. That hot, putrid stench floated up again, and Rick felt the whipping sting of the hairs snapping around his ankle. But the moment they did, he chopped. It may have been tedious and tiring, but Rick wasn’t one to let himself be overtaken by something he knew how to handle.

With ankles burning and well-coiled in decapitated loops of hair, Rick pushed the statue to the end of the concrete slab, and the nearer edge thudded to the ground. Quickly, Rick pulled himself up on the block base, where the hairs couldn’t reach him, and for the first time since he’d started this task, he took a breather.

He sat with his back against the lion’s open mouth, its big paws on either side of him. He placed the axe on the outside of one of those paws and, with a grimace, slipped his fingers under the strands and strands of nasty, wet hairs that pinched his throbbing right ankle. He pulled, but couldn’t tear the slimy coils. His fingers slipped out, and Rick gritted his teeth against the pathetic urge to gag. He wiped the sludge on the side of his coat, then pulled the THE TOWER key from his pocket. He got to work using the jagged edge of the key to cut away the hairs. Once his more wounded ankle was free, he worked on the left, then tossed the hair piles. They flopped onto the grate like slug corpses.

He pocketed the key and looked back toward the wall with the stone tower. He hadn’t managed to get the tail right against the wall. There were maybe three feet between, and the gate door sat a few inches higher. He’d have to jump it. His right ankle throbbed. His muscles were worn. But he’d jump it. Because somehow, Morty had to be there. It made no physical sense, but he had to be.

Rick picked up the axe and rose to his feet. Maybe it was a second wind, but the pain didn’t seem to matter anymore. He stepped to the lion’s side, gripped the ripples in its stone mane, and hoisted himself up. He trailed his hand along the rough surface of the beast’s arching back, feeling how the ridges in his hand and fingertips gripped the stone before stepping up on the lion’s jutting shoulder blade, pulling himself toward the lion’s raised backside. Then he reached for the base of the tail. He grabbed it, and kicking, he pulled himself up.

Breathing heavily, Rick got his footing and stood on the lion’s rear. Then he hoisted himself onto the platform made by the tail’s bushy tip. There was just enough room for both feet side by side, and one in front of the other. A bit of pride swelled in Rick, and feeling a little more smug, he eyed the gate. He hadn’t seen it from below, but now he could see a red light glowing from within. He couldn’t see the source, or anything else for that matter. But any doubt that he might be going in the wrong direction was washed away by that red light. About three feet forward and a few inches up made for an awkward jump with his hurt ankle, but he could handle it.

He jumped. Colliding with the gate proved it to be firm. Its thick bars rattled deep and only for a moment when he'd grabbed them, and he pulled his feet up onto the small ledge. There was a key hole, and Rick was already reaching for the key in his pocket when his leaning weight pushed the gate in. Surprised to find the gate unlocked, Rick stepped through and into a room that was more of a short hallway. In the back was a square of wood set into the stone floor, a metal looped handle decorating its front. A trapdoor. The red light, even fainter now, seeped through each edge of the door. So Rick grabbed the round handle and pulled the trapdoor open.

It was about a seven foot drop to what seemed to be a glowing red circle. Other than that, Rick couldn’t make out the rest of the space. But since there were no other paths available, and bright red had yet to fail him, Rick prepared to jump down. He slid the axe handle through his belt at his hip so that the axe head held it in place. Then he sat on the edge of the trapdoor, turned around, and let his body slip down while his fingers gripped the edge of the doorway.

He saw the vertical bars before he let go, but before he could plan his next move, his fingers slipped, and he hit the ground just below. He turned around, and a small shot of panic lurched in his gut. He was in a cage. The glowing red circle was the base, although now that he was here, the glowing had decreased significantly. It could be described as gentle, unlike the skinny bars that circled him. Above, the trap door thudded closed, and hitting up at it with the axe proved that it meant to stay closed.

Beyond the cage was a large, open room lit by long panels lining the walls that displayed explosions of purple and green patterns as if to a beat. Rick’s cage was hanging from the ceiling. The floor down below was covered in thick, rolling fog, and green lasers streaked across the fog from above. Rick could smell that somewhat sweet and cool smell of fog machine liquid. Way across the way at the end of the room were a set of large double doors.

Also to Rick’s right and left, evenly spaced across the room and a little forward from his own, were two more cages like his, both hanging from the ceiling by long poles. These cages each held a mannequin, the one to his left, a tall and curvy, large chested woman figure, and the one to his right, an even taller barrel-chested man figure. They were both milk white and lacked heads.

He figured he was supposed to be in some sort of dance club. Or rather, a warehouse that was in the process of being converted into a dance club. But despite the lively lights and the thick fog, the room was silent. Rick shook his bars, and they rattled. They were thin, so he tried to pull them apart. Then he tried to use his axe to pry them open. But in this metaphysical bullshit place, the thin bars were as strong as steel beams. Irritation swelled in Rick, and he shouted, striking the bars with the axe several times until he got tired, but that was only stress relief. He knew it wouldn’t get him out.

Just as Rick was about to commence another outburst, the sound of squeaking caught his ear. _Squick-squeak squick-squeak._ They were little wheels. Heart speeding, Rick pressed himself against his bars, looking out across the room. Then he saw him, with fog up to his thighs, Morty wading toward the double doors. The four metal legs continued to roll on their wheels around him, holding that black curtain so that Rick still couldn’t see above Morty’s shoulders. Although he could see from this angle just a peek of the brown curls on the top of Morty’s head.

Rick rattled his bars. “Morty!”

Morty stopped.

“Morty, where are you going? Help me out of this cage! Hey, y-you listening to me, Morty? We gotta- gotta get the hell outta this place!”

Behind the curtain, Morty turned around. Rick hated not being able to see his face.

“Rick?”

His voice sounded airy and dream-like. And as light as it was, it bounced off the walls and filled the whole room.

“Oh thank God, you can hear me,” Rick sighed. “Morty, we’re in the- the pyramid. Understand? Y-you’re in here with a demon, and I need t-to get you out before she devours your whole mind!”

Slowly, Morty replied, “Why do you think I’m here?”

Rick’s stomach dropped, and as usual his concern manifested as anger. “Y-y-you _want_ to be a brain-dead vegetable?! You dummy, do you have any idea how much of a pain in my ass that’s gonna be?”

“I want to not think. Don’t think about it. Right?”

Rick glared. Morty was repeating the solid advice Rick had given him in the past. “What, suddenly your life is so bad you’d rather wipe your memory clean? Sure, Morty. You’re the king of mental suffering, you big baby.”

“Just a few things. I only w-wanted to forget a few things. B-but now that I’m here,” Morty paused, and the curtain swelled with his breath, “I know how much nicer it is not to think at all.”

“C-come on, Morty. Knock that shit off. Look, w-will you take that stupid curtain away from your face so I can look at you? I don’t care what stupid garbage you want to forget. I can’t afford to have you wiping your brain-waves. I have too much important shit to do.”

Morty turned away, continuing steadily toward the doors, curtain wheeling with him.

“Besides, if… If you were really fine with forgetting everything, you wouldn’t be leaving me all those red things. Th-those red clues so I know how to- where to follow you.” Morty stopped. “A-haaaa! I got you there, didn’t I, Morty?”

A still silence. Then the curtain rippled. Rick thought he saw the shape of a face. Not Morty’s. He was turned the other way. It was something more beastly, its mouth gaped open as its form rolled across the black sheet. Morty’s hands shot up, clutching at his head, and he screamed.

Rick’s blood felt like ice under the throat-rending scream. When it stopped, Morty continued to whimper, “Uhh, huuh. Huhhh. Ohh.” Rick shook at his cage again, looking around his confines frantically. Whatever was happening, he needed to be out there. He spotted, in the top right corner of the section of the cage he’d been clinging to, a key hole. He grabbed the THE TOWER key in his pocket, and Morty, still seeming to be holding his head, began walking quickly for the double doors.

“Morty, wait!” Rick shook the key where it had caught inside his pocket. When it came free, he rose on his toes and jammed it into the key hole. The front of the cage swung open, creaking. When the key didn’t easily come out of the hole, Rick abandoned it and, axe firmly gripped in his left hand, leapt to the floor below. The fall was further than the jump into the cage, and Rick tumbled, pain shattering through his right ankle. He hit the floor on his hip and shouted out. Morty pushed open the double doors and stepped through, letting them fall closed with a heavy thud behind him. Rick ran anyhow. Getting to his feet and gripping the axe in one hand, he sprinted for the doors, hobbling slightly. He threw his weight into one of the push bars.

Locked. He tried the other door, but of course it was locked as well. A thin chain connected both doors’ bars, and on that chain was a teeny-tiny padlock like one from a child’s diary. It couldn’t have been there when Morty went through. Rick grabbed the padlock and tried to rip the chain, but with supernatural strength, it held its place. Rick’s growl started low and crescendoed into a scream of his own. He pounded his fist on the door. “Morty! Dammit!”

Thudding his forehead to the door, Rick seethed. But then his ears pricked up, and his eyes widened. The creaking of opening cage doors. He didn’t want to turn around, but he did. He watched the headless mannequin man and mannequin woman walk to the open edges of their cages on smooth, stiff limbs that realistically should not have been capable of moving at all. Now Rick could see that both their necks were adorned. Mannequin Woman wore three glow stick necklaces, glowing red, blue, and green. Mannequin Man wore a string around his neck, and hanging at his chest was an uncracked, pale yellow-green glow stick of his own.

Mannequin Man was the first to fall out, and he gracelessly hit the floor on his chest with a loud crunching sound. His stiff arms groaned as they bent to put palms on the floor, each finger crackling in protest of being straightened. He rose, bits of the concrete floor flaking off his burly white chest. There was a second smashing thud to the right, and likewise, the Mannequin Woman rose on her stiff limbs, dust from the crushed floor falling from her bullet breasts.

Rick’s eyes danced suspiciously between the two mannequins. If they attacked, they’d clearly be trouble. But they were slow, and Rick figured he could evade them easily enough. It was just a matter of figuring out where to evade to. But when Mannequin Man straightened his back, Rick saw that the fall had jostled his necklace, and dangling beside the uncracked yellow-green glow stick was a teeny-tiny key.

He had no choice. Rick was going to have to fight these things. Mannequin Woman stepped forward, and beneath the fog, the floor thudded below her feet.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter and chapter 1 are brought to you by Real Fake Doors. Get in quick, get out quicker, with an arm full of fake doors. Actually, that was just a coincidence, but maybe I'll still get paid. I hope you enjoyed! I'm really looking forward to chapter 3, and I hope you are, too.


	3. Stray People

Rick really hated this metaphysical bullshit place. Why was a nightclub-esque warehouse part of the same complex as a sleazy hotel? What was with the bars and curtain around Morty, and why did he keep leaving? How were these mannequins able to move without joints, and how were any of these monstrous things able to physically harm him at all? It made no sense. Logically, the only physical beings inside the cage should have been Rick and the demon. Everything was wrong here, and Rick couldn’t stand not having a grip on it.

From in front of the double doors, Rick could see the three cages from which he and the mannequins had fallen. The two further forward hung from the ceiling by long poles, but the middle cage, the one Rick had been in, was attached to a stone structure that came down from the ceiling and traveled back to the end of the room. Inside the stone structure was the hallway that he’d entered from the courtyard. The drop from the cage to the floor had been a far one. A stupid distance to jump. But Rick had. And now he was sporting a bruised left hip along with his throbbing right ankle. He was lucky he hadn’t broken anything. He was especially lucky now that he was confronted by another opponent.

The Mannequin Woman took a few steps forward. Each step banged against the concrete floor. The Mannequin Man hadn’t moved. He almost seemed uninterested. It was an odd thing for Rick to believe since neither mannequin had a head atop their somewhat too long necks. Necks that were flat on top. No heads. Certainly no eyes. And yet Rick sensed that the Mannequin Woman was cutting into him with her gaze. He lifted his axe, pointing with it.

“All right you dense fucks. I just need that key around Rocky’s neck over here,” he pointed to the one on the left, “and then I’m outta here.” Rick took a tentative step forward, then another, and when neither mannequin moved, he held the axe in both hands and walked straight for Mannequin Man, his eyes moving between them lest a change in either’s behavior occur. “Not to underestimate my audience, bu-but that was a Rocky Horror Picture Show reference. Not Rocky like Rocky Balboa.” He stopped in front of Mannequin Man, and carefully he reached for the glow stick necklace that held the tiny key. So far he wasn’t reacting, but Rick had a gut feeling that the moment he touched that ribbon-necklace, he was going to have to whip that axe up pretty quickly. “I mean they’re both classics. Really i-i-it was my responsibility to be more clear with my pop-culture references.” His fingers touched the uncracked, pale yellow-green glow stick that hung between Mannequin Man’s impressively carved pectorals, when _cra-kow_!

The blow to the side of Rick’s face sent him sprawling to the floor. The pain danced like flames across his skin, and it took him a moment to come to his senses enough to realize that the reason he couldn’t blink his eyes into focus was because he was under the thick layer of fog. When he did realize, he scooted back and sprung to his feet, axe prepared for an incoming attacker. Instead, he saw the Mannequin Woman standing beside the Mannequin Man, her leg bent and arm extended from the punch she’d thrown. Mannequin Man hadn’t moved. Rick snarled. It looked like it was time to change targets.

With axe raised, Rick yelled as he closed the distance between himself and Mannequin Woman. But just as he was in the process of bringing the axe down on her, he heard the deep groaning that was the mannequins’ movements. Just in time, Rick raised his arm to protect his face, and Mannequin Man’s solid fist crashed into his upper arm. Rick stumbled sideways as his left arm exploded with pain. He stared wide-eyed at his attacker, his heart pounding. His arm, it had to be broken. With a hit like that, it had to be.

It hurt like hell to move it, but he could manage, so broken it was not. Rick growled. Both mannequins were still again, but at least he understood. They were protecting each other. How sweet, he thought bitterly. So he had two attackers for sure, but one point remained. He only needed to kill one. He had a theory to test.

With his injuries, Rick’s charge was more of a gallop as he circled to Mannequin Man’s clear side and readied his axe for a strike. Mannequin Woman’s limbs groaned as she quickly stepped around her man, her arm pulled back for another punch, and as she threw her fist, Rick turned. The axe head collided with Mannequin Woman’s fist, smashing it, sending it flying in a hundred shards like an exploded clay pot. This was not what Rick expected, and now they both stood frozen, Rick staring at her jagged wrist stub, gawking at its dark and hollow inside.

Then, like a hose, blood sprayed from the stub, showering the left side of Rick’s face and his left shoulder with thick, hot blood. He backed away, wiping at his eye with his coat sleeve, leaving him unprepared for when Mannequin Man threw a side kick at him. Clumsily, Rick dove out of the way, hitting the floor on hands and knees. He bounced up again, panting. This was good though. He’d dodged Mannequin Man’s attacks. The fight was hard, but at least it had a logical pattern. His theory was correct. He couldn’t land an attack if he struck offensively, but he could if it was defense.

Mannequin Woman’s blood spray grew weak, and the stream lessened until blood only dripped from her wrist. Rick readied himself, and then, lightly so that he had control enough to stop it, swung down toward Mannequin Man’s extended leg. Again, just as Mannequin Woman shot her remaining fist toward Rick’s face, Rick turned his body, swinging his axe full force like a bat and striking her at the shoulder. Her whole intact arm shattered apart from her shoulder, sending the limb thudding to the ground. This time, Rick jumped out of the way before the blood sprayed from the hole.

Rick was ready to dodge Mannequin Man’s attack. But he wasn’t ready for Mannequin Man to lower his extended leg, turn around, and then come sprinting like a track star, tackling into Rick full body and knocking him to the ground. He hit hard on his back, both of Mannequin Man’s hands pinning his shoulders. Looking up at him, Rick could see where his bulky, milk-white arms extended above the layer of fog, the glow stick hanging halfway in with the key above. The mannequin had gone still again, and Rick writhed beneath the great weight. With a yell, he gripped his forearms and pushed, just managing to get Mannequin Man’s hands disconnected from his shoulders, allowing Rick to slip away. The mannequin’s hands hit the ground with a loud clack, leaving him on his hands and knees. Rick rolled away, snatched up the axe, and, in a bout of frustration, rose onto his own knees and chopped Mannequin Man’s ankle.

It shattered in the blow, and Rick instantly flinched, eyes snapping to Mannequin Woman. He’d fucked up, and yet he hadn’t been struck. Why was she still standing perfectly still, blood dripping from her shoulder and wrist holes?

Rick felt the blood from Mannequin Man’s ankle pool at his knees, so he stood and backed away. He looked at his legs, where his slacks were wet at the knees and where his calves disappeared below the fog. And then he understood. His blow to Mannequin Man had been below the fog. Somehow, even without eyes, whatever allowed the mannequins to see didn’t work through the fog. Rick was annoyed because what fucking sense did that make? But also, he was pumped. He’d figured it out. He ran for Mannequin Woman, dropped to his knees, and swung hard into Mannequin Woman’s lower calf. It shattered, and she fell sideways to the floor, hitting the concrete. Nothing of her came above the fog, and Mannequin Man remained on his hands and knees, none the wiser to her demise as Rick rose to his feet and hacked. And hacked and hacked. All of his frustration went into it, and blood spurted from her torso. He’d been wasting his time with tiring tactics when this could have been so easy. His time was being wasted in this stupid fucking place. Morty was out there risking his mind, and Rick was being outsmarted by a bunch of monsters and this warped place’s fucked up logic.

He hacked and hacked. A few shards of Mannequin Woman’s body flew above the fog, and Mannequin Man’s limbs groaned as he rose up on his knees. That sound pulled Rick from his rage, and he panted. Blood spattered, he turned to look at the other mannequin, but Mannequin Man had stopped again. Rick shook his head and rose to his feet. Standing was a painful reminder that he was a beaten up old man, and he might forever remember the groaning of the mannequins’ movements when his own movements became stiff. He held up the axe head and saw that it was getting rough, the edge chipped and cracked but still usable. Holding the axe at his side, Rick stepped up to Mannequin Man, bent down to him, and slipped the ribbon necklace off his long neck.

“Uhh. Guess it’s easy n-not to worry how she’s doing when she- when you can’t see her. Out of sight, out of mind. Guess that’s the song we’re all supposed to rave to here.” Letting the necklace slide down to his elbow, Rick wiped his hand over his face, saw the blood on his hand, and patted over his flask pocket. His empty flask pocket.

He limped to the double doors. The key was held to the ribbon by a little wire key ring, so he slipped the key and ring off, stuffed the ribbon and glow stick in his pants pocket, and unlocked the tiny padlock. The ends of the thin chain fell away from one another. Rick tried to remove the tiny key from the padlock but it remained jammed inside, so he dropped the lock to the floor. Looking back, Rick could see the dim glow of Mannequin Woman’s necklaces through the fog. With a stern face, he pushed one of the doors open and stepped out.

 

The door shut heavily behind Rick, leaving him in a small, dark stairwell lit only by scarce, orange lights embedded into the wall. Emergency lights. The stairs only traveled upward, and looking up, Rick could only barely make out how the stairs climbed higher and higher in their square spiral until they disappeared in the darkness. Rick leaned into the railing against the wall, and gritting his teeth against his pain (his hip, his ankle, his face, his lungs) he began his climb, his footsteps echoing off the cold block walls.

There were five landings, but only the fifth at the end of the stairs had a door. Another set of double doors. On the wall to the right of the doors, situated under one of the orange emergency lights, was the same framed image of a triangle that Rick had seen in the hotel hallway.

It was the same image of a printed triangle with three horizontal lines, separating the triangle into four sections with the third from the bottom being wider than the rest. And like before, one of the sections was streaked across with a highlighter. Before it had been the bottom section, but now it was the second section.

Rick groaned, annoyed at just now realizing what the image represented. It was a map of the cage. And he was just now reaching the second floor. Was the demon implying that he would be forced to go through four floors of this shit? What would happen at the top? Rick didn’t give a fuck what the demon had planned with this map. He was determined to find Morty again and catch him before he wandered off. But little good that would do without the fail-safe exit, and he had a feeling that he wouldn’t find _that_ until he reached the top floor.

Rick pushed open the doors and found himself in a dark hallway, lit by the same orange emergency lights on the walls. he couldn’t yet see where the hall opened up at the other end, but he could see that each wall held four rooms, each with a door numbered 101 to 108. Rick looked about for some clue. Some conveniently red door or object or light. But nothing stood out. He went to the first door to his right and was surprised to find it unlocked. Remembering the first unlocked door he'd entered in the cage, he peeked in cautiously. But he found the room too dark to see in anyhow.

Pulling back out of the room and closing the door, Rick reached into his pants pocket and pulled out the glow stick on the necklace. He shrugged. It was better than nothing. He cracked it and gave it a good shake, watching it light up to a nice, deep green. It was brighter than he’d expected, and he slipped the lace over his head letting the glow stick dangle against his lower chest. When he opened the door again, he held the stick out and scanned the room’s interior.

It was a hospital room. Was he supposed to be in a hospital now? To the right was a bed with bare medical racks by its head and a metal folding chair at its side. On the other side of the room was a sink with cabinets beneath and shelves beside. Luckily, there were no monsters in sight. Rick stepped in, letting the glow light fall against his chest again. He hoped to find something like a clue in this open room, but nothing stood out here either. The sink wouldn’t run when he turned the knobs, and the shelves were devoid of any medicine. With a shrug, Rick left the room. Maybe one of the other rooms would open and provide him with something.

As much as Rick had been annoyed by the hotel hallway’s abundance of fake doors, he was almost more annoyed by this hallway’s provision of open doors. Of the first five doors he tried, three opened, and each room matched the first. Bare skeletons of hospital rooms. This was disheartening. After the fifth room, Rick called out for Morty. And not surprisingly, he heard no response. So he crossed the hall from left to right, going for room six. He opened the door and went inside, and the glow stick light shone on a humanoid silhouette sitting up in the bed.

“Holy shit!” Rick spat, jerking back against the door as his heart tried to jump out of his chest. He put a hand on his forehead and took a breath. A longer look proved the thing in the bed to not be alive. It was just a life-sized doll. Rick moved closer. Its face was merely a sack with no features painted on. Its torso and legs were a sewn up and stuffed button-down shirt and ragged slacks. Its hands, which rested in its lap, were fingerless mitten-hands made of the same type of brown sack as the head. A chill ran up Rick’s back as he poked the doll’s belly. It felt like it was filled with stuffing.

It was only because he had gotten so close to it that Rick noticed the little thing it held between its mitten hands, and he picked it up. It felt like a thick paper coin in his fingers, and the picture on the front was of-

“An orange?” Rick said. Could it be important? He rolled his eyes, laughing at himself. He was so desperate. How could a little cutout of an orange possibly be important? What logic was that? And yet he couldn’t shake the feeling. This place didn’t seem to give him things that weren’t important. And there was that thought again. Give. Rick could pick up the damn chair and carry it around if he wanted, so what was to say that he was _supposed_ to take the cutout orange and not the hospital bedding? If he ran into another monster, he’d do more damage throwing this doll at it than flicking a paper coin at it. And yet he found himself dropping the orange safely into his pants pocket.

It was that metaphysical logic again. This cage altered by a demon’s influence. Rick didn’t like it, but he continued limping from room to room regardless.

The rest of the rooms in this hall were as empty as the first. Then Rick reached the place where the hall opened up into a larger room, also lit only by the scarce orange lights. He really was in a hospital. To the left was a long, crescent shaped desk near the wall that Rick figured was probably a nurse’s station. The rest of the room was lined with chairs whose thin cushions were colored with clinical greens and blues. The rounded wall to the right opened up to more hallways. Including the hallway that Rick had just come from, there were five halls.

Approaching the nurse’s station, Rick saw that in the corner past the desk was a square where the gray-tiled floor turned to a soft wood texture. In the square, against the two perpendicular walls, were little bookshelves filled with books of different sizes, as well as a low table holding one of those wiggly-railed bead mazes. In the middle of the square was another low table, this one made to look like a tree stump, surrounded by three cushions. Just a cute little corner for very young children to entertain themselves.

Rick slid his hand along the top of the nurse’s station desk until his fingertips knocked against the edge of a sheet of paper. He picked it up, raising it into his green light. The form itself was the usual patient information dribble. But written down the front of the form in scratchy, black pen, was a note:

**As**

**People,**

**Plenty**

**Stray**

**Off.**

(can stray people still hold fruit?)

It would be hard to recognize anybody’s handwriting when scratched and scribbled like this, so maybe he was imagining things, but Rick thought he recognized some of the letter shapes. The sloppy way the “y” was too high for lowercase. How the tail on the “a” went a bit too long. The fact that the f’s in “Off” shared the same line. It looked like Morty’s handwriting.

“I get it,” Rick said to himself, and a little to Morty. “I screwed up by mentioning the red things, didn’t I? She didn’t like that. N-now this is how you have to lead me, is that it?” He stared at the script. “But what the fuck is this supposed to mean?”

Fruit? People? Oh! The orange in his pocket was held by a person. Or at least a person-looking thing. And there were four more halls. Maybe there were more dolls with fruit. Rick grinned wide. He was gonna figure this place out. Yeah, he was gonna beat the shit out of it. He folded up the note and stuck it in his back pocket, then headed for the second hallway.

This hallway, like the first, held a mix of locked and unlocked doors that totaled eight. The first two doors were locked. The third opened to another regular hospital room, and like the others, Rick found nothing worth taking inside. The fourth room, which had a sign above that claimed that it led not to a patient room but to a maternity ward, was locked. The fifth and sixth rooms were locked, with room 206 claiming to be a supply room. But the seventh door opened into another patient room. There were no dolls in the bed, so Rick was ready to write it off like so many of the other rooms when his heart gave another jarring jump.

The room _did_ have a doll, and it looked just like the one from before. This one, however, was on the other side of the room from the bed and was hanging down from the ceiling by a wire that wrapped around its neck. Its head hung limp to the side, its sock feet just a few inches away from brushing the floor. Rick also noticed that this was the first room to lack a chair, but that hardly seemed important. He’d just expected to see it turned over on its side. After all, if it was supposed to look like this doll had committed suicide, it would have been a nice touch.

Constructive criticism aside, Rick neared the doll, raising the glow stick from his chest to inspect it. Sticking to the left side of its chest was another paper fruit coin. This one depicted a pear. Rick picked at the pear with his nails, and it pealed off the doll’s chest as if it had been held by a very gentle adhesive. He flipped the pear coin around a few times in his fingers, then put it in his pants pocket with the orange. When he looked at the doll again, hanging by its wire, a shiver ran up his spine. He couldn’t seem to comfortably turn his back on it, so he was glad that Morty wasn’t around to see him back up toward the door, axe gripped.

Door eight was locked, so Rick went back to the reception waiting room and moved on to hall number three. Of these eight rooms, half were locked and half were open. It was room eight where Rick found the next doll, this one sitting in the folding chair in front of the sink. It was slumped forward so that its face was propped against the edge of the sink basin, and its arms were dangling by its side. This one’s fruit coin was stuck to the side of its head. A strawberry.

Hallway four’s doll was in the first room. It sat on the floor with its back against the side of the hospital bed, its legs splayed out in front. By its hand was a little paper cup, and it was in this cup that Rick found the fruit. He picked the cup up and turned it over in his hand. An apple. Rick put the apple in his pocket, raised the paper cup in cheers to the doll, then crumpled it and tossed it past the bed. “If I don’t get a fucking drink in this place, neither do you.”

He thought about moving on to the last hallway, but he couldn’t shake the inkling that there might be something else to find. This turned out to be a bust. Most of these doors opened, but they were all as skeletal as any other. Only three doors in this hall were locked. Two of them were a men’s and women’s restroom rather than patient rooms, but Rick didn’t have to piss anyhow so their being locked was no issue. It did, however, annoy Rick that he had indeed wasted his time.

The last hallway was easy. There were only four rooms instead of eight, but only one door opened. This must have been an office hallway, because the room that Rick found himself in was smaller than the patient rooms and had only a desk with a computer chair and some empty shelves. The doll sat in the chair, its whole upper body slumped forward onto the desk with its arms crossed under its head like it had fallen asleep while working. It made Rick wish he could take a nap. This one’s fruit was on the back of its head. It took Rick a moment of staring at the image under his glow stick to determine that the round, purple fruit was a plum. He pocketed it.

He returned to the waiting room with the five fruit, one from each hall. “OK what now?” he muttered, pulling the note out of his back pocket and opening it up. But there was no further explanation. “What now? What now? Come on, Morty. Give me something.” As people, plenty stray off. What did it mean? Can stray people still hold fruit? He had the fruit. He paced about the waiting room, staring at the note, knocking the back of the axe head against chairs as he passed, feeling the twinging of his hip and ankle. This cryptic stuff was not his strong suit, and as much progress as he had thought he was making, it all clearly was a waste of time. He was no closer to Morty. Panic boiled to anger inside him, and he swore the next time he caught up with Morty, he was going to grab the little shit’s arm till it bruised to keep him from running off again.

Rick’s pacing led him to the children’s corner, and his eyes fell on the stump-shaped table. There was a book on it that he recognized easily. It was a popular children’s book about a caterpillar that ate a lot. Ate a lot of-

Quickly, and against the protests of his joints, Rick plopped down on one of the cushions and snatched up the book. He flipped open the thick cover and skimmed the familiar text. He flipped to the next page, the page where the first fruit should have been shown. Instead, the thick page had a round indentation where the picture should have been. The place where the text named the fruit was scratched to hell with a black pen. The next four pages were the same, the names of the fruits scratched out, along with the numerically increasing pictures shown on each page. Each page ended with an indentation perfectly sized for the paper coins in Rick’s pocket. But there was no way he would know which coin to put in which page. He wasn’t familiar enough with the book. Maybe if he’d been around more when Beth was that young...

“The fuck does it even matter?” Rick grumbled. “What does putting pictures in a kids’ book have to do with anything?”

He slammed the book on the table, staring at that first page with its empty indentation. He pulled the coins from his pocket and scattered them on the table, then pulled the note from his back pocket and slapped it open on the table as well. He needed to think. As people, plenty stray off. As people, plenty stray off. As. Apple.

“Son of a bitch.” Rick picked up the apple coin and stuck it in the first page’s indentation. Its edges seemed to meld into the page, and Rick blinked several times as he watched a tiny circle carve itself into the center of the apple before popping out, leaving the image with a hole in the center. He remembered this. The holes were the caterpillar’s bites. He turned to the next page, where there should have been two pictures of the second fruit, but the first was scribbled out and the second was an empty slot. The next word was “people” but he had a pear and a plum.

Well. Clearly, it was the pear coin that went on this page. He put it in, watched it meld to the page before hole-punching itself, then quickly turned to the next page and stuck the plum in the slot. “Plenty”, plum. This really was child’s play.

The next page was the strawberry, and after that, the orange. Rick slipped the orange into its slot. “OK,” he breathed, watching it meld into place, “w-w-what happens now? This better have a damn point.” The little hole popped in the center of the orange, and in Rick’s hands the page turned. From here, all but the final pages had been torn out, and portrayed across that final two-page spread was a butterfly. Its body sat in the center, while the wings, black with luminous blue circles, stretched onto the pages on either side. The wings didn’t span the full length of their pages, however. Instead, the bug's size was much more modest, as if a real butterfly had landed in the book. And just as Rick was thinking this, the butterfly folded its wings, closed then open. Rick rose his brow at this, his mouth falling open as he watched the butterfly rise from the pages and flutter softly in the air.

The butterfly began to float across the waiting room, over the chairs and toward the wall with the hallways. Rick sat the book on the table, picked up his axe, and rose to his feet. With a second thought, he also grabbed the note, folding it and stuffing it back in his pocket. He didn’t need it anymore, but something silly in his head made him want to keep it. The butterfly fluttered to the entrance of the fourth hallway, and Rick followed it down.

“What y-you think I didn’t already check everything in this hall?”

He followed the butterfly and its blue light to the women’s restroom door, where it landed on the keyhole. Its wings and body became engulfed in its gentle light, and its physical body disappeared. The blue light seemed to seep into the keyhole, leaving Rick alone in the hallway. He heard a heavy click, and when he put his hand on the door handle, it turned, and he entered the women’s restroom.

Aside from the green light from his glow stick, the room was completely dark. The butterfly fluttered out from behind Rick, its physical body restored, and he watched its blue, luminous wing spots as it flew under the door of one of the stalls. Rick followed, pushing open the stall door. Inside, fluttering around and in and out of the toilet bowl, were a handful of butterflies, all the same as the first. Rick stepped forward, letting the stall door fall closed behind him, and he peered into the toilet bowl.

He backed away at the sight, his hand coming up to cover his mouth and nose. The butterflies were eating the bloody, messy mass in the toilet. Slowly, Rick took his hand away from his mouth as it occurred to him that the stall didn’t smell of a heaping pile of shit. However there was a distinct, albeit muted, smell of rot, and a thicker smell of blood. Rick held out his glow stick to take a closer look. The idea occurred to him that a woman had used this stall and, by a terrible stroke of chance, had miscarried. His eyes fell on the metal pipe running up the back of the toilet and the long flush handle coming out from it. Hanging from the flusher was a key on a thick, metal ring. Rick grabbed the key, but there was no indication as to what lock the it went to.

One of the butterflies flew by Rick’s head, and he turned around to follow it. The butterfly circled, going back to its meal, but Rick’s light fell on the inside of the stall door. A message was written on it in a deep red.

When he flew away, she was left with the guilt.

Butterflies don’t care if caterpillars get to make cocoons.

Is it cause they know they’ll die soon anyway?

The handwriting still looked like Morty’s, but was it supposed to be a clue? Reading it filled Rick with some sort of guilty sadness he didn’t care for but that made it hard to focus on the text nonetheless. “Just tell me where this key goes, Morty. There’s like twenty locked doors. W-we don’t really have time for riddles or whatever th-the fuck this is.” He spoke firmly, and yet he found his shoulders sagging. His frown grew deeper. He stuck the key in his pocket and turned to the butterflies. “You know where to go, right?”

He reached for one of the butterflies, his long fingers wrapping gently around it. The butterfly went still in his hand, putting up no fight, but when Rick pulled it to himself and opened up his hand, the butterfly remained stiff, its blue spots no longer glowing. He poked its back, then traced across its wing, feeling the powder on his fingertip. It was dead. Rick turned his hand, and the butterfly fell to the tiled floor, landing without a sound. Rick slumped against the side wall, his fingers wrapping around the glow stick as if it might warm him.

“Th-th-this is fucking hopeless, isn’t it? Fuck,” he whispered as he slid to the floor. He really did hate this place. What was the logic? Was he really going to have to navigate four floors? How was he supposed to know where to go? Floor One barely made sense as well, but at least it had been a mostly straight shot. He’d felt so sure of himself when it came to the fruit search, but now it seemed like nothing more than false progress. Like making to-do lists. Setting up without following through. He’d only been roaming hallways, getting no closer to Morty. Getting no closer to getting off this floor.

He wished Morty were here. He may not have been the sharpest when it came to hard-set rules, but he was actually pretty good at shit like this. A small smile tugged at Rick’s lips as he remembered watching movies with Morty, and how Morty could surprise him with how quickly he could determine where a plot was headed. How Morty would sometimes scoff at lines he thought were bad or trite even when Rick didn’t personally see the problem. Story logic. That was a good way to describe it. And Rick had never complimented him on it. Not once.

Rick looked at the door message again. He read it, trying to imagine what Morty was thinking when he wrote it. What was the significance of the message? Did the dead mass in the toilet have anything to do with it, or was that just some nice decorative choice to set the mood?

It was that sardonic thought that pulled Rick to his feet. He knew where the key went. It was so obvious.

Rick jogged back to the waiting room and made a beeline for the second hallway. He ran down it, stopping in front of the door that said “Maternity Ward” overhead. If this wasn’t the right room, he was going to be pissed. He took the key from his pocket and stuck it in the keyhole. With a heavy turn, the lock clicked. The key stayed jammed in the hole, but Rick didn’t care because when he took hold of the handle, it turned. He opened the door.

 

This hallway was brightly lit. On the wall to the right was a long, horizontal window, and just past that was an open door. Rick walked forward, looking into the room through the window. There were five rows of little baby beds. He walked past the window to the open door, beside which was a plate with the word “Nursery” engraved on it. He stepped inside, and as he crossed the room he scanned the baby beds. They were all empty, neatly made with white sheets. All except for one, which sat in the back corner. On it was a shiny black bag like a garbage bag, and it twitched. Inside the bag was a throbbing, twitching thing.

Rick sneered as he reached out for the garbage bag, his gut clenching as he neared, but just before his fingers touched it, it tore. Tore in a long slit just in front of Rick’s fingertips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My tumblr: [triplex-tyrant.tumblr.com/](http://triplex-tyrant.tumblr.com/)


	4. Familiar Faces

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Previously: Rick explored a hospital, collected puzzle pieces from strange dolls, and made his way to a nursery. Here he found a twitching garbage bag.

The moment the slit tore down the side of the garbage bag, Rick recoiled his reaching hand and instinctively lifted his axe. Whatever was inside, twitching and throbbing, began to push out, slowly stretching the slit wider as its wet, fleshy self shoved through. The stretched plastic began to tear around the slit, looking like bubbles in boiling black water, and the thing inside seemed to grow larger as it slid into the world. Its mucous-covered flesh was a sickly shade of gray, and when the creature fell from the baby bed, garbage bag left behind, it hit the floor with a splat.

It was a horrible sight. The creature rose onto stubby legs, one of them extremely thick with knots and knobs, the foot looking like that of a pachyderm. Standing as tall as one of Rick’s legs, its body was like a toddler's, but its flesh was badly warped. Its belly button and nipples rolled inward, leaving only little scar-like lines. Its bald head was also warped on top, leaving a long fold along the upper left side. The flesh around its eyes had nearly swollen shut, and its lips were pulled up into something of a cleft lip that rose into a single raw, flat nostril. Rick could hear the baby-thing breathing through that nostril, and he saw moisture spray out on the exhales. As for the arms, one was large and club-shaped with stubby fingers while the other was longer and skinny, its fingers fused together so that the hand ended in two brown claws. Nothing could be said for its genitals, which were hidden between swollen thighs.

For some reason, the word “inbred” came to Rick’s mind, even though he knew such a horrific outcome wasn’t scientifically accurate.

From behind, Rick heard the nursery door slam shut. He turned his head to it, furrowed his brow, and turned back to the creature. It stepped closer, and Rick backed up, raising the axe to his chest. It had gotten taller when he wasn’t looking, coming now to the height of Rick’s chest. The creature raised its clubbed arm, opened its raw mouth, and let out a squealing cry.

That racket alone would have been enough to make Rick’s skin crawl. But coupled with the grotesque design, the outcome was downright nauseating. The baby swung its clubbed arm at Rick’s face, but he parried with the axe handle. The force sent Rick staggering backwards, but he was quick with his retaliation, swinging into the baby’s side, the axe chopping into its thick skin and cracking a rib with its force.

The baby screamed, its scleras turning red behind its swollen eyelids and teeny, black pupils. Rick pulled against the handle, but the axe was stuck, jammed deep in the baby’s side. The baby lifted its long claw arm, rearing its pointy elbow way back. Rick’s eyes widened and his mouth fell open as he stared straight into the two thick claw-fingers.

 _Shwoof_. Releasing his hold on the axe handle, Rick pivoted just in time to watch the claw arm piston-shoot forward into what would have been his face. What would have been his bloody, blinded, and useless impaled face.

The extended claw arm swayed from its elbow like a straight razor from its handle, and it swung for Rick. Rick ducked, dropping to his knees before the baby could gash open his side in a tooth-for-a-tooth retaliation. The swing must have been too much for the baby considering the way it stumbled on its uneven feet, turning and toddling away a few steps before it caught its balance.

Rick watched the baby with calculating eyes. Its stumbling had put the axe on its far side. Before the baby could correct itself, Rick launched off from the floor, tackling straight into the axe handle and forcing the blade out of the baby’s thick hide.

With axe in hand, Rick crashed into two of the crotch-high baby beds, tripping over them and hitting the row behind them so that he hit the floor in a mess of metal bed frames. Without giving a thought to the bruising, he turned onto his back and watched the baby.

The wound in its side poured a sheet of thick, purple blood. It looked like someone had filled a waterfall fountain with ink. It stained the baby’s side and down its leg, painting the linoleum floor at its non-pachyderm foot. The baby took a long, deep inhale through its single raw nostril. Then it screamed.

Its enraged eyes found Rick on the floor, and it toddled for him, its feet slapping the linoleum. “Sh-shit,” Rick breathed, trying to pull his legs out from the frames of the baby beds he’d tripped on. The baby stood over him and lifted its clubbed arm. Rick reached behind himself and grabbed the leg of one of the baby beds he’d fallen into. He turned, pulling the cumbersome high-rise crib over himself, his shoulder against a row of bars.

The baby’s club struck the side of the crib, bending the outer row of bars down to the row across Rick’s shoulder. Most of the blow was absorbed by the crib, but Rick instantly regretted using the same arm that had received the mannequin’s blow earlier. The baby didn’t retract its club arm, but instead gripped its stumpy fingers around the mangled bars of the crib. Rick turned and grabbed onto the bars, and when the baby lifted the bed, it also lifted Rick to his feet. The moment he was up, Rick planted his foot on the baby’s chest and gave a solid kick, releasing his hold on the crib. With a softly confused “gah,” the baby fell backwards, thudding onto the floor with the bed on top of it.

Rick snatched the axe up from the floor and sprinted for the door. He grabbed the handle and tried to turn it, but it stopped short. Locked. “Dammit, dammit. What the fuck?” Rick cursed. He smacked the door and turned back around.

The baby rolled out from under the mangled crib. It turned onto its belly, trying to push itself up. But its clubbed hand slid in the slick, inky blood, smearing it in streaks on the floor while the other hand slipped and scraped on its claws. Rick yelled, running back to it with the axe in the air before the baby could get the hang of its situation. It lifted its swollen head to Rick as he approached, and when the axe head came down, the baby lifted its clawed hand, catching the axe head in the V of its fused fingers.

With a turn of its hand, a long crack broke down the center of the wearing axe head. Rick broke away, snapping one of the claw tips before he pulled back and brought the axe head down onto the baby’s skull. With the first hack, the baby screamed out, and inky, purple blood spewed and darted a streak across the bottom of Rick’s coat. With the second hack, the baby dropped to the floor, totally limp and silent with the back of its head looking like a busted up, overly ripe melon.

Rick bent forward, panting. He wiped sweat from his forehead and spat salty spit on the floor.

A squelching, crunching sound brought Rick’s eyes back to the dead creature. From the messy purple split in the monster’s head, a small, silvery-white object pushed its way out. Curious, he bent to the wound and took hold of the smooth object, wiggling it loose. He stood up with it, and turning it in his hands, he determined that the object most resembled half an egg. It looked like somebody had cut a metal egg in half down the narrow top, leaving one flat side and one rounded side. The egg was smooth and slick against his fingers. Even the inky blood hadn’t been able to stain it.

Rick slipped the egg into his coat pocket, then turned and headed for the door. But it was still locked, and Rick scowled. He didn’t have a key for it. Should he?

He briefly worried that in all his searching of the hospital rooms, he’d overlooked a vital item. But one look at the door and its handle revealed that it had no interior locking mechanism or key hole anyhow. Only smooth metal plating. Rick felt the egg in his pocket. Could it be a key?

 _Squick-sque_ _a_ _k_ _click, click._ _S_ _quick-sque_ _a_ _k click, click_.

Rick perked up, pressing himself against the glass window. “Morty?” The sound from the hall was muffled by the glass, but it became unnervingly audible as it came closer with no Morty in sight. In fact, in the brightly lit hallway, Rick saw nothing. Nobody. And yet- _Squick-squeak click, click._ The invisible steps came to a stop in front of Rick. He'd placed his fist against the window, and now he felt the glass vibrate faintly. This was accompanied with a few dull squeaks.

Rick pulled away from the window and watched the faint smears of an invisible finger dragging against the other side of the glass. He watched in silence for several seconds. Then, with a thud, a foggy hand print smacked the glass just to the left of where it had been writing. And from the center of the foggy print, something like gray soot blossomed out, darkening the print and making clear every line and twist of the flesh that had left it.

In a sort of trance, Rick found his left hand rising to the window, and he placed it over the print. His own hand covered the print entirely, the sooty fingers ending just at Rick’s distal knuckles. For some reason, the coldness of the glass disappointed Rick.

The marks left by the invisible finger seemed to respond to Rick’s hand. As though a breath were being blown over the glass, the finger’s writing filled with the same soot that filled the hand print. Having been written on the other side of the glass, the words ran backwards, but this didn’t make it any harder for Rick to read:

Do not combine the egg and snake

lest thoughts of sin should incubate.

Think no evil-

Two things, and only two things, were clear to Rick. This was Morty’s handwriting, and he had something like an egg in his pocket. With a dull creak, the nursery’s door opened slowly inward. Quickly, Rick shoved it open the rest of the way and rounded into the hallway. Those footsteps that approached the window never seemed to walk away. Those wheels never sounded since coming to a stop. But even now that he was standing where the message writer had been, the hall was just as empty as ever.

Rick turned in place, and at the closer end of the hall, what had been a dead end by the nursery’s entrance was now a hefty metal door with no knob or handle. Thick hinges held the door on the left, and to the right of the door was a plate not unlike the one that labeled the nursery. This plate, however, held no words. Only a vertical protrusion in the center, rounding outward like a thick coin stuck in a slot. And in the center of that thick coin, an indentation of an oval with three lines coming out each side, like six little legs.

“Bug?” Rick said, feeling the indention with his fingertips. Somehow, it looked so familiar. He was sure he’d seen something similar. Something that made him think of a bug even though it only gave the most basic shape. What had it been?

And then he remembered. He flipped the axe handle up, and sure enough, there on the end that poked through at the back of the axe head was a raised image of the same oval-bodied insect. That’s right, Rick thought. He’d noticed it when fighting one of the ball sack monsters.

“Fuckin’ A!”

Rick jammed the end of the axe handle against the indentation, blade pointing upward. A powerful magnetic force pulled the axe handle forward, sliding it further through the axe head, and the two insects clicked together and sealed tightly enough that when Rick released the axe, the handle jutted out solidly.

Rick combed a hand through his hair, and he gave a short laugh. “It’s a motherfuckin’ lever.”

He rubbed his hands together, then planted them on the handle. He pushed down. At first, the lever budged only slightly. Then his feet rose off the floor, all his weight on the handle, and the mechanism squealed as the lever slammed down. Tumblers turned, and the metal door popped open, coming inward just a bit, its thick edge merely resting against its frame.

Rick shook the dull ache out of his palms before grabbing the axe handle again and giving it a tug. But the seal was too strong. That force like a powerful magnet was holding the axe handle to its slot. And just like every other key that Rick had used so far, it seemed that the axe-turned-lever had no intention of being removed from its spot. But with a determination that outweighed his weariness, Rick released his hold on the handle and pulled open the hefty door. He’d have to trust that Morty would provide him with another weapon. Assuming, that is, that Morty even _could_ help him along at this point.

The metal door led into a room that Rick almost wished he didn’t recognize.

It wasn’t exactly Beth’s and Jerry’s bedroom. For one, the bedroom door in the real world wasn’t a hefty metal thing with no handle. Rick left the door ajar as he walked further into the bedroom. The carpet squished under his shoes. The walls and ceiling were splotchy and browned with water damage and mold, and the air was cold and dank. The computer desk was bare, the chair missing. And the glass door that should have led to the balcony was replaced by a smaller wooden door. And quite a shabby door at that.

But the most bizarre feature of the bedroom was the one that, at first glace, had seemed the most mundane. And that was the bed. The tan comforter that covered it fell inward drastically on the farther side. Rick rounded to the bottom corner and grabbed hold of the comforter, surprised to find it as waterlogged as the carpet. He yanked the soggy blanket away.

The comforter hit the carpet with a splat, and Rick released his hold on the corner. A little less than half of the mattress, which sat bare atop its box spring, had been torn off. Rick didn’t know if it was Beth’s side of the bed or Jerry’s, but when he rounded the bed to get a look at the mattress’s torn edge, he was awed by the sight of its exposed inside. He imagined a cartoon strong-man tearing the mattress apart like a phone book. The springs and foam topping ran jagged up the length, several of the outermost springs having been pulled outward and broken in the tear just as easily as the weaker material.

A picture hung on the wall beside the bed’s headboard. It was a grayscale photograph that Rick couldn’t make out right away, for it was partially obscured by metal bars that came out about two inches from the wall just above the frame, down over the front of the picture, then back into the wall below the frame. Not that Rick was super familiar with Beth’s bedroom, but he was almost positive that if Beth had a picture hanging here in her real bedroom, it surely wasn’t behind bars. He stepped closer, and his eyes adjusted to the dark image.

It was him. It was hard to make out his form in the darkened room, but sure enough it seemed that the photo had been taken from the doorway of his own bedroom. His back faced the camera, bare. His lower half was visible to the backs of his knees. This at least was clothed. His shoulder blades appeared prominent, as his arms were in mid motion for pulling on his undershirt, visible around one arm.

Under different circumstances, it could have been a flattering photo. His hair had that tameness it only ever had post-shower, and the shadows on his back gave the illusion of a more prominent musculature. But Rick felt chilled. When had this photo been taken? When had he stood in his room, dressing with the door open and completely unaware of a secondary presence?

It wasn’t that he was particularly modest when it came to his body being exposed. But Rick didn’t appreciate being spied on. For all he knew, this was a message. A message that he wasn’t alone in this cage. He was being watched. Watched by a vengeful demon. And what about Morty? Where was he now? Probably being watched by the demon as well.

The musty stink of the room was threatening to make Rick dizzy, so he headed for the shabby wooden door.

At this point, he wasn’t surprised that the door didn’t open up to the balcony that should have been beyond that wall. He found himself in their dining room. It was as bright and clean as ever.

It was almost a perfect recreation. The furniture was an exact replica of what decorated the Smiths’ real dining room. Same wooden chairs with blue cushions; same checked, yellow table cloth. The walls were that familiar cream color, floor the same hardwood. The same ceiling sloped toward the window. Even the grandfather clock in the corner was stuck on 12:30 as it had been since before Rick had even moved in.

But the doors. Those were entirely wrong. Rick had entered the dining room from the direction that should have been the kitchen. The same doorway he walked through every day on his way to and from the garage. But none of the arched doorways were present in this version of the dining room. Across the way, what should have been a clear view of the house’s front hallway and stairs was instead a solid wall with two closed doors about three feet apart. The one on the right was made of a dark brown wood, while the left was a peachy pale color.

“L-let me guess. This is some kind of light-side dark-side, diverging paths thing, right?”

The wall to his left should have provided the arched doorway to the living room. Instead, the wall was mostly taken up by a solid black set of double doors. Like the metal door into Beth’s bedroom, the black double doors had no handle or knobs.

On first glance, Rick had thought that he was seeing night through the room’s large window. He stepped up to it, leaning into it so he could peer through his own reflection and into the dark outside. His glow stick glared in the glass and clacked against it when he leaned forward, so he pulled the ribbon off from around his neck and stuck the glow stick in his pants pocket.

Upon closer inspection, Rick realized that the outside of the window was covered in something like a thick, black tarp. Indeed, there was nothing beyond it to be daytime or nighttime. Not really anyway.

Around the room, four more photographs were hung, each covered by bars just like the picture in the bedroom. Two were on either side of the window, while the other two were on either side of the door Rick had entered from. The same places where photos hung in the real Smith house dining room, but needless to say, these were not the same decorative pictures that Rick had grown accustom to.

The first was another grayscale photo. Again, the subject was Rick. The camera was looking down on him from over a shower curtain. Spraying water stayed frozen in mid fall, Rick’s head turned up to it, eyes scrunched closed, lips parted to blow the water away from his mouth.

“What the fuck?” Rick breathed.

The next image was in color, but greatly over saturated. A small distance away, Rick and Morty headed for the ship, leaving a desert planet. The sky was blaring blue, and both their shirts were harshly bright. Rick remembered this. Morty had sprained his ankle after taking a tumble down a sudden embankment. He was smeared with orange clay, overbright in the photo, and Rick was holding him by the elbow to help him walk.

These were the photos around the window. The picture to the left of the wooden door was much more naturally colored, and more clear than any of the others. Taken from the dashboard of his ship, Rick was looking off past the camera, out the windshield. His mouth was a strange, open grin, probably a result of talking since Morty was looking at him, an all too familiar eagerness on his smiling face. Rick could almost recognize when this was. It gave him a sense of déjà vu so strong that it made his stomach flip.

Then he did remember it, because there were bug nets in the back. Three weeks ago, he and Morty had flown to a distant planet to collect alien bugs. It had started off pleasantly, as the photo showed, but by the end of the day they were both smothered in bug guts and Morty was about as pissed at Rick as he’d ever been. The photo took place before Morty had any idea that he would be slathered with jelly and used as bait for bee-like creatures with highly venomous stings.

Yes, he did remember this. And his stomach gave another flip, because he understood that these photos weren’t taken with any camera. They were snapshots taken from the mind.

Rick turned in place. He felt eyes on him. Eyes _in_ him. “You piece of shit. Stay out of my mind! Fuck your bullshit photography. M-my memories interest you that much, huh? I bet I’ve got some images in there that can even make a demon bitch like you blush.”

Looking at the photos as long as he’d been was a mistake. He couldn’t keep thinking about them. What he felt when he looked at them. What he’d felt when they occurred. There was no telling what this demon could do with that information. He had to put up a mental block.

In frustration, Rick struck his fist against the bars of the final picture, and pain vibrated through his hand and wrist. He slammed his eyes shut against it, then opened them one at a time, face to face with the photo. Face to face with himself. He took hold of the outer bars and gazed into his own eyes.

Grayscale again, and very dark, photo-Rick hovered over an upward facing lens, his bare arms extending to either side of the frame as he held himself up. His chest was visible down to his defined ribs, and he leered with a crooked smile, tongue tip poked between teeth. He might have been intoxicated, but his eyes, even in shadow, were focused. Intense.

To Rick, the Rick in the photo didn’t look quite right. Like if he’d tried to match his expression, he wouldn’t be able to pull it off. It wasn’t exactly like the photo was doctored. It was like it was drawn or painted, which made no sense. It was a photograph, just not one actually of Rick.

This was not a memory. And it definitely wasn’t from _his_ mind.

His body flashed hot then cold. Then he pushed himself away from the wall. It was time to focus on something else. Preferably something useful.

Something else that Rick had noticed upon entering the room was the plate in the further corner of the table. Beside the plate were a fork and steak knife, and on the plate was a big lump of dark, bloody meat. A large kitchen knife was buried halfway into the meat, its handle sticking straight up. Rick rounded the table and pushed the chair out of his way. When he realized what the meat was, his brow shot up.

“A heart? A human heart? Yeah I’m sure that’s quite the scary decorative choice, but y’know, I’m not exactly the squeamish type. I mean, ahh- I dig around innards on the regular. I get that yy-you’re getting your clues for human terror from Morty’s brain, but give him a _little_ more credit. I’ve shown him shit way more unsettling than this. I appreciate the knife though.”

Rick grabbed the handle and gave the knife a yank, but the heart was tough and the blade didn’t move. He took up the fork to pull apart the muscle. He tried to spread the knife-made gash with the fork, but when that wouldn’t work he picked up the steak knife and began to cut away large chunks of the heart.

“Uch. OK. This is a little nasty, but mm-mostly it’s just tedious.”

Finally, the kitchen knife toppled over the side of the heart. Rick sat the fork down, then wiped the steak knife off on his coat and slipped it into one of the inner pockets, thinking it might be useful as a utility. He grabbed the kitchen knife, pulling it out of the mess of meat and into the air, and in the blackened window across from him, he could see his own reflection very faintly, standing tall with knife in hand. And behind him, the reflection of a deathly pale face, its features sagging with furious sorrow.

His own heart in his throat, Rick spun around, knife at the ready. Then, with a deep scowl, he lowered it.

Decorating the front of the black double doors, and split down the center where the two doors touched, was a white, mask-like face. Rick recognized the typical tragedy mask. Its sorrowful eyes and painfully dreadful mouth were cut out so that the doors behind them left them pitch black.

He moved closer to the face and let his fingers slide over the smooth bumps of its many frown lines. It reminded him of the Mannequin Man and Woman, and he shivered. In the middle of each eye hole, carved into the wood of the doors, was a small, hexagonal hole no bigger around than a dime.

Because the black double doors didn’t have any means to open them, it seemed he only had two choices for now. On the wall that should have led to the front hall, he had to go through either the peach door on the left or the brown door on the right.

Rick made his way to the right door. He turned the door’s banged up brass knob and pushed it open, stepping in.

 

Jerry’s study had been scorched. The salmon walls were scarred with black, and the carpet crunched under Rick’s feet. The couch was burned down to its frame, and the computer monitor on the desk was melted onto the desk’s surface. But these things were not why Rick’s mouth had fallen open, nor were they why he stepped slowly toward the center of the room.

Jerry’s corpse hung from the ceiling by a rope noose. His toes almost brushed the floor where the carpet had been torn out, leaving a large square of bare wood stained with blood, old and browned. This was where Jerry’s recliner should have been, but the recliner was nowhere in the room.

Rick rounded Jerry, leaving a good few feet between them, and when he stopped in front of Jerry’s low hanging corpse, Rick’s mouth clamped shut, and he swallowed.

Jerry’s chest had been carved out. The square tear in the front left of his shirt was just wide enough for the empty cavern behind it. Down his front, Jerry was stained with dried blood, and he smelled of it. Bitter and rotten.

Rick looked at the knife in his hand. The blood on his own skin from the heart in the dining room.

Jerry’s mouth was wide open, but his tongue was so swollen that it filled it completely and then some, bulging out raw and split with sores. Rick thought, at least he’s not able to run his dumb-ass mouth in here. But it wasn’t a very comforting thought.

On the floor between Jerry and the couch was a small, white bottle with a blue label. Rick picked it up. Sixteen ounces of bleach with a screw top, still sealed. Maybe someone was planning on cleaning the room, Rick thought, slipping the bottle into a coat pocket. And what a waste of time that would be.

Now at Jerry’s side, Rick could see that his right hand was firmly closed in a fist, and seeped out between each finger was a thick, white residue. Curious, Rick took Jerry’s hand in his own and felt that the residue was dry and stiff. He tried to pry the fingers open, but they were glued shut.

Two fat dollops of yellow puss fell from Jerry’s open chest, hitting the stained wood with a _splat splat_. Then the blobs uncurled, revealing themselves as long, thick, slug-like things, each just under a foot long with bulbs on their necks the color of bright green snot.

Rick grimaced and placed his shoe on one’s length. He pressed down, but it was rubber-tough, so he rose his foot and stomped down. Its back split open, and dark blood rolled out.

He moved his foot over to stomp on the second one, but it leapt at him with surprising power. Rick jumped back, and it landed on his thigh. He yelled out when it bit into him with a leach-like mouth of needle teeth. He grabbed it, but it was slimy. Its neck bulb swelled as it drank, and through the thin skin Rick could see dark green clouds swirl.

He dug his fingers under the mucous-laden leach. The slime oozed between his fingers as he pulled, but finally its teeth ripped out of his skin. He threw it to the ground, but the leach rebounded quickly, leaping at him again. Rick swiped his knife, slicing the leach in half. Its parts hit the carpet and leaked a mix of dark blood and fresh, bright red blood.

Rick looked at the circle of small holes punched into his pant leg. The material grew dark as blood flowed out, and he bent down to press a hand over it.

When the pain subsided, he lifted his head, looking up into Morty’s eyes.

 

Jerry’s eyes. They were both lidded to different degrees, dry and blank.

It was true that Morty shared a few of Jerry’s features. The eyes were especially similar. But even so, for the briefest moment, that gaze had looked too similar. It shook Rick to the core. And for a while longer, Rick watched Jerry’s eyes, intently waiting for them to change again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My tumblr: [triplex-tyrant.tumblr.com/](http://triplex-tyrant.tumblr.com/) hmu if you want.


	5. Eat Your Heart Out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's start Halloween month off right, with an extra long chapter!
> 
> Previously: Rick fought a malformed toddler monster, then made his way to a place that resembled the Smith house. Here, he found Jerry's corpse hanging from a rope and fought two leaches.

After some time, Rick pulled his hand away from his thigh, and it seemed the circular wound was finished bleeding. For the time being, he found Jerry’s study to be little more than a dead end, so he returned to the dining room, finding it just as he’d left it. The tragedy mask frowned from the locked double doors. The mess he’d made of the heart remained on its plate on the table, but he never looked directly at it again. With nowhere else to go, Rick moved down the wall to the lighter door. Uncertain of where it might lead, he turned the knob.

The door opened, bumping the wall at its right. And against that wall, about five feet in front of Rick, was a familiar cherry-wood vanity. It was familiar because it was Summer’s vanity. And this was Summer’s bedroom. And sitting on the little bench before the vanity, slumped forward so that her forehead pressed against the mirror, was Summer.

Her arms dangled by her sides, the ends of her fingers coated in red. Looking at her right side meant that Rick couldn’t see much of her face at all, and her steady, heavy breaths fogged the mirror so much that any reflection became indiscernible.

“Summer?”

No response.

This room, unlike Jerry’s scorched study or the waterlogged master bedroom, was clean and bright. In fact, the room was almost as neat as Summer’s actual room. But as was usual in the cage, her shelves were entirely bare, and the window across the room - the one in front of her desk - was blocked on the outside by the same tarp-like blackness that covered the dining room window. Still, the room was almost a perfect replica. The vanity, the bed, the shelf made to fit in one corner, and the wardrobe that stood against the same wall as the door Rick had entered from were all accounted for.

But one difference was impossible to overlook. That being the lack of a second door, which should have been just to the left of the bed’s headboard. Here, that wall was plain pink wallpaper no different than the rest of the room, with the only oddity being the notable scratches and peels in the wallpaper near the floor.

Rick took this all in, then stepped closer to Summer, gripping his knife. The red that colored her fingertips dripped slowly, beading and falling onto the little stain in the carpet below.

“Hey. Are you hurt?”

Of course, Rick understood that this wasn’t actually Summer. He was sure that seeing her face would cement the fact, so he stepped closer. But just as he leaned down, craning his neck to look around the side of her head, a strong, nauseating vertigo rocked through him. His vision swam, and he quickly rose and pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose, eyes closed tightly.

“Sometimes I think,” Summer’s words floated out of her in a voice so precise that Rick’s eyes fluttered open in response. “I think I still hear it.” Rick could only barely see her lips moving. “I know they still can. Mom and Dad. They pretend they can’t.”

“What are you talking about?”

After a few more heavy breaths against the glass, she continued. “But I couldn’t pretend. Not anymore.”

“Yeah, thanks. That reeally answers my question there.”

Rick went to turn away. Those scratches in the wallpaper were calling to him. But then Summer lifted her hand, and he stopped to watch as those red fingers slowly rose to the vanity’s tabletop.

The table was stocked with a small selection of nail polishes, as well as a bottle of polish remover, and Rick wondered briefly if Summer’s fingers had simply been soaked in polish rather than the obvious alternative. But her hand hovered over these, entirely uninterested, before coming down upon a pile of wooden cuticle pushers. Several of these had ends stained in a dark red-brown, and some were snapped and splintered. Summer’s fingers closed around one of the few remaining intact cuticle pushers, and without ever moving her face away from the mirror, she lifted the stick up by her head.

“I made it so I wouldn’t hear _anything_ anymore.”

She slid the pointed end into her ear.

“Hey!” Rick grabbed her arm, trying to pull her hand away, but the vertigo hit him again and harder than before. He could feel himself wanting to fall forward into Summer, so he released her, stumbled backwards, and while the room spun around him, fell onto his ass.

From the floor, his head cleared as he watched Summer vacantly jam the cuticle pusher into her ear. Part way in, the stick lodged, but with another decisive shove, she forced it deeper. Blood ran over her fingers and down the side of her head.

Rick found himself flinching at the sight, but Summer remained dispassionate, even as she pulled the stick back out, a small jet of blood following after. She dropped the stick back onto the pile, let out a long exhale, then let her arm fall to her side once more.

Rick turned his head away, shutting his eyes against the sight. He knew it wasn’t really Summer. Hell, he had derided Morty for this exact behavior over those possessed clones from another dimension’s future back during that exciting and dangerous adventure. And yet, just like Jerry’s hanging corpse, Rick found this obvious recreation all too close to home. He didn’t know why. He knew better. All these manifestations were the same. Summer. Jerry. Even they were no different than the monsters.

These were Rick’s rationalizations, interrupted with the opening of his eyes. On the wall by Summer’s vanity, just beside Rick, hung another mirror. This one was tall, rectangular, and not fogged or dirty at all. The sight that Rick saw in it, however, was a mess. A mess of blood, and grime, and bruised skin.

He stood, taking in his reflection. His hair was disheveled, matted with dirt and dried blood. In fact, the whole left side of his face, as well as that shoulder, was stained red from the spray of Mannequin Woman’s wrist. His coat had been splattered haphazardly with blood that had dried to rusty and muddy colors in different places. Then there was that streak of purple where his coat hung around his left knee.

And speaking of his knees, the brown khakis were darkened there from soaking up Mannequin Man’s blood. And above that, on the front of his left thigh, was the ring of holes and the dark blood stain from the leach bite just moments ago. At his ankles, the oils from the drain hairs in the first floor’s courtyard had left dark circlets on his pants, and his right ankle was so swollen that the material clung too snug against it.

All this mess in one night. And to be without his tech. Without his flask. Maybe he was in Hell.

A sound beyond the mirror caught Rick’s attention. A dull shuffling. He stepped closer, touching the top of the mirror’s frame lightly as he turned his ear to the wall. It was such a familiar sound. A shuffle. A small thump. Some squeaking. Then a deep sound. Maybe a voice. And a breath.

What was beyond this wall? Rick was sure that it should have been Jerry’s study. But he’d just been in there, and it was nothing if not silent. Even if Jerry had somehow awakened, his tongue was so swollen that Rick doubted he could get out a single moan or groan.

_Moan. Groan._

And anyhow, this sound seemed too near to be coming from where Jerry dangled at the center of his study. This sound had to be directly on the other side. No, Rick was certain that what he was hearing wasn’t from the next room over in _this_ place. He knew what wall this was. He’d teased Summer about it before. It was the wall that separated Summer’s and Morty’s bedrooms.

 _Smack_! The wall was struck from the other side. Rick pulled back in surprise, his retreating fingers pulling the mirror's frame, and this combined with the vibrations in the wall caused the mirror to slip from its small nail. It scraped the wall before landing hard on the floor. The glass spiderwebbed, the mirror bounced on its bottom edge, then the whole thing fell onto its side, spilling shards of glass onto the carpet.

On the wall, the faint form of a small hand came slowly into view, like grease soaking through a sheet, until it became a strong, dark print of splotchy grays and greens. Unlike the sooty hand print he’d encountered in the nursery, this print gave Rick a strong sense of dread. Then, through the wall came a new groan. Deep. Ragged. Almost beastly.

Rick (recognized) perhaps foolishly drew close once more, baited by (familiarity) curiosity.

 _Smack_! Rick jolted back. Just above the hand print, a second, larger hand soaked through. They must have been made of mold because Rick could smell it, faintly at first but quickly growing. And Summer must have smelled it as well, or else she felt the vibrations, because slowly, she turned on her bench until she faced Rick. Her head remained low, casting her face in shadow. She took in a rattling breath, then said through a clenched throat that caused her words to waver, “Grandpa Rick, how could you?”

Rick’s head snapped back to the wall because now, to the right of the hand prints was a sound and sight like rain hitting dry pavement. Dots of mold began to mar the wall, hitting small and swelling fat. The dots increased until they became a downpour, growing louder and louder until it was so overwhelming that Rick covered his ears.

Summer’s back began to straighten. She gasped for air as she jerked upright, and when Rick could finally see her face, he saw her eyes roll far back in her head. Her face was framed on both sides by trails of blood. They ran from her ears to her jaw, having dried and run anew over and over again. The downpour stopped suddenly, and she said, “You can’t make it out, Rick.” A chill ran down Rick’s spine. Her voice was somehow not right, corrupted by a rattling in her lungs. “Not while trying to save him, anyhow. You’re not needed alive.”

Suddenly, Summer began to convulse. With asthmatic gasps, her head flopped back while her shoulders and chest shuddered. Then, just over her left breast, a fat mass shoved through, tearing out of her shirt and falling to the floor.

Another leach. Its puss-colored body glistened in the light, and the green bulb on its neck was swollen, the juices swirling visibly within. Rick gritted his teeth, stepping back and pulling his knife up.

The hole in Summer’s chest ran fresh blood down the front of her shirt. She flopped forward, and more leaches poured out. Five more fat leaches flopped to the floor, and all six began to slide after Rick.

Rick took a single sidestep, and one of the leaches scrunched back and sprung at him. This time, when Rick swept his knife, his swiftness failed him, and the leach landed on his right forearm. Had his arm been any lower, the leach would have been on his chest, but as it was, it pierced its circle of razor-sharp teeth through the two layers of sleeves and into Rick’s arm.

Rick gave a short shout, grabbing the attacking leach. He noticed two more poised for attack, and quickly, he struck one with the heel of his left shoe, splitting its back open, pouring what was surely Summer’s blood onto the carpet.

He went to stomp the second leach, but swiveling on his right foot was a wonderful reminder of his sprain as a sensation like flaming glass ignited in his ankle. He stumbled, hitting the ground with a groan on his left hip, and he sweated at the realization that he’d be in a lot more shit if he’d landed on his right, which he’d already injured in the careless fall from the Tower cage.

He didn’t have time to reminisce about careless injuries if he was going to learn from them. The poised leach sprung onto Rick’s left shin, but didn’t yet bite. As the remaining three leaches scrunched back, Rick took the opportunity to bring the back of his heel down on one of them, killing it easily but giving the last two a chance to jump at him.

Rolling out of the way, Rick managed to dodge the straight on attacks. He reached behind himself and grabbed the blanket hanging at the foot of Summer’s bed, using this to hoist himself to his feet. Finally, he grabbed the leach drinking away on his arm and tore it off. With his knife, he slit open its belly, and clear liquid ran cold over his hand, followed by the heat of his own blood. He dropped the dead leach to the floor, where it curled up, leaking onto the carpet.

The leach that had landed on his shin had been making its way up, and now he felt its weight drag onto his belly. As he went to grab at it, he felt another weight on the back of his left shoulder, slowly crawling over it. One of the leaches he’d dodge, he realized, had actually landed on his back.

He grabbed the leach at his stomach, but it secreted so much mucous that his fingers could only slip over its body. It soaked through his shirt, making it cling cold to his skin. The leach at his shoulder now slipped over, dropped down, and clung to the fabric over his chest. Then it bit.

This bite was unlike any before. The piercing of teeth seemed to shoot through his whole body, tearing through his core and numbing his limbs. The kitchen knife fell to the floor, his fingers slipped off the leach at his belly, and his knees buckled, swinging out as easily as an open gate in a typhoon. He fell to them, gasping to pull air into weakened lungs.

The leach at his stomach continued to crawl. Rick lifted his heavy arm, trying to grab it before it bit, but it quickly slipped up beside the leach at his chest. Rick’s fingers could merely brush its slimy back before it injected him with the same numbing agent. His arm dropped.

On the floor, by his knee, was the last remaining leach. Rick glared at it, his fingers twitching as he tried to muster up the strength to reach down and grab his knife. His body flopped forward, his hand landing on the handle and holding his weight. He grinned, baring his teeth to the last leach as he wrapped his fingers around the handle and regained some control of himself.

He sat up, pulled the knife back, and just as he brought its sharp tip down, the last leach leapt, landing easily among the other two leaches, hitting Rick right over the heart.

It bit. And the others bit and bit again. With barely enough strength for a whimper, Rick’s body went cold, and the knife fell to the floor once more. The only sensations were those of the leaches’ razor teeth, and the shocks of the numbing agent tearing through him with every pulse of his heart. And he knew why.

It was his heart. They were all trying to get to it. Maybe they were going to hollow out his chest, just like Jerry’s. Maybe they would burst through like they did with Summer. If he let them, they would eat his heart.

Everything felt heavy. His eyes felt heavy. With each bite from the heart-eaters, Rick grew more tired. His head hung down, his lids slipping over his bleary eyes. His mind felt fuzzy. It was almost pleasant. They would eat his heart, and then he’d be dead. Truly and finally. He was only faintly aware of the drool running down his chin. He was falling asleep. Even the bites weren’t hurting anymore.

Dead. Truly and finally.

But these little fuckers were underestimating him. Or was it the demon bitch who sent them?

Twitching fingers slowly tightened around the knife handle. His arms trembled with the great effort it took to raise them, and he brought his hands together, clutching the handle, blade pointed inward.

He would not die by her hands. He would not let _her_ have this satisfaction.

The knife plunged into flesh. Once. Twice. Three times.

The three fat leaches fell to the floor. Their green neck bulbs deflated as Rick’s blood flowed out of them. Slowly, Rick regained sensation. His breaths deepened, and his hands and feet began to prickle. After a while, he pushed himself to his feet, swaying in his lightheaded state.

“Talk about a waste of time,” he said, passing the knife from his right hand to his left so that he could stretch his stiff muscles.

The floor before him was littered in glass and dead leaches. The section of wall beside Summer’s corpse was now blotted out by the mold, but even within the swirl of sick colors, Rick could see the especially deep forms of the two hand prints. He was resolute in turning his back on it all.

It was time to get back to the matter at hand.

 

The wall at the left of the bed’s headboard called to him. He stepped up to it, kneeling to the floor in order to inspect the tears in the wallpaper. But even up close, the messily peeled wallpaper didn’t prove to be anything important. Not at first. All Rick saw were uneven scraps missing here and there at odd angles, revealing smooth wood beneath. Smooth, that is, except for one small scuff. At the edge of one of the bare spots was a scrape in the wood. A shallow but wide scar that disappeared behind the pale-pink paper.

Rick ran his fingers along the scar, then picked at the paper with his nail, bits flaking to the floor. Then he pinched the paper between his fingers and peeled a long strip, revealing more and more scratches, clearly deliberately carved.

They were words. The marks varied between deep, shallow, wide, and skinny, making the jagged lettering difficult to decipher, but soon Rick had uncovered a section of wall half a foot long and four inches high, and the words became sentences.

The room where we hide red eyes.

The door where children play and hide.

Where a beast is savior, and man a witch.

Rick’s snarl was automatic. “Couldn’t just write, oh I dunno, ‘The easy way,’ a-and then an arrow or something. Y-you couldn’t be assed to do that for me, right?”

He mulled the text over for a moment longer, but each moment he spent reading the words was another bubble in the boil of his nerves. The message mentioned a door, but the door that should have been there was definitely not. He looked about the room. There was the door he’d come through. There were the double doors in the dining room with the tragedy mask, but its eyes weren’t red so it didn’t seem relevant. On the adjacent wall was Summer’s wardrobe, but its doors wouldn’t lead to another room.

Would they?

Summer’s wardrobe, here as in reality, was a large wooden thing with double doors that stood just under the height of a standard door frame, coming out from the wall about two and a half feet. Rick stood and turned to the wardrobe, giving one of the little knobs a tug. The door jiggled, pulling out only barely before sticking fast to its partner. Sticking, Rick noticed, quite literally, for when he peeked through the tiny crack, he found that what connected the doors from within was some sort of dark film. It reached from top to bottom and seemed to be made of either cloth or some strange gunk. He couldn’t open the wardrobe with that stuff in the way, and the gap was far too small to fit a finger through. But it was just wide enough for the blade of his knife.

Sticking his kitchen knife through the crack, he felt the easy pressure of it slicing past the film. But when he tried to cut downward, the knife wouldn’t budge. Even sliding the blade back and forth wasn’t enough to saw through the tough stuff that Rick was now equating to muscle in texture.

An idea. Rick pulled the kitchen knife back out, slipped it into his coat pocket, and drew out the steak knife. With a smile for his superior thinking, Rick shoved the steak knife through the crack, and with its serrated blade he made quick work of tearing through the tough, sinewy sheet.

With doors successfully cut apart, Rick slipped the steak knife back into his coat pocket and opened the wardrobe. Hanging from the rod were several coats, jackets, and dresses which, as far as Rick was familiar, might have been pretty accurate to what the real Summer kept in her wardrobe. He pushed these to the side as he stepped in, reaching into the darkness.

Whatever Rick thought would be at the back of the wardrobe, all he managed to do was foolishly smack against the solid back board. No entryway to a new room. No knobs or handles for a secret door. Just plain wood.

He pulled out, and as he had no words to describe his annoyance, frustration, and indeed, embarrassment, he growled.

“You know,” he muttered, “the problem is probably that,” and then speaking louder, “whoever is writing these things doesn’t understand that riddles are supposed to make sense! They’re not just- just _words_ all shat out on top of each other.” He rested his hand on his chin. “They’re supposed to make sense.”

He’d thought he was playing by the rules. Thought checking the wardrobe was so clever of him. Anyhow, he decided, even if that were the answer it wouldn’t have made much sense. It wasn’t like there could be a room past the wardrobe. It would have just led back into the dining room. Since this warped place had, at the very least, a somewhat concrete layout thus far, surely there would need to be a room already beyond the wardrobe for it to lead anywhere.

“Oh.”

This thought gave Rick an idea. So he stepped to the wardrobe’s side, in the corner of the two walls, and grabbed it by the back edge. If he turned out to be wrong again, he’d feel even more foolish. But that didn’t matter. He pulled the wardrobe out from the wall, circled to its other side, and pushed it in front of the carved message. Then he stepped to the front of the wardrobe and shoved it against its new wall.

With the wardrobe in place, Rick stretched his back, straightened his coat, and grabbed the two little knobs.

Pushing past the clothes once more, Rick found himself stepping out into a dark, little room, the air clear of mold. His shoes tapped atop small tiles. With a short swipe of his hand against the wall, he found a set of two switches, and flipping the closer of the two brought the overhead fluorescent bulb to life.

This was the house’s downstairs bathroom. To the right was the sink. Beside that, the toilet. And against the far wall, the bathtub, left half obscured by the shower curtain, cream white and covered in tiny, orange sea horses. And sitting inside the tub, in plain sight and glinting in the light, was a red jewel no bigger than a dime. And Rick would bet money that a closer look would prove it to have a hexagonal cut.

With a smirk, and a thought that he was doing pretty damn good after all, Rick stepped up to the tub and leaned in, hand reaching for the jewel. But before he could grab it, he froze. With his head past the curtain, he could see a large, brown mass coming out of the drain.

At first, the mass simply appeared to be muddy water that had pooled in the tub. But a small bit of the drain was still visible despite the stuff filling most of it. As well, there was a smaller trail of brown stretching out from the larger mass along the tub floor that was too thick to perfectly pass for liquid. It was, Rick supposed, some sort of tendril, and with narrowed eyes, he brought his hand down on the red jewel. This was a mistake.

The tendril lashed out, snapping itself around Rick’s right wrist. He winced, then his eyes widened. On the end of the tendril, curling upward, were a pair of parted lips. They looked as though they had been molded from raw ground chuck, and past them were eight pearly white teeth, four top and four bottom. They would have looked picturesque behind human lips.

The teeth parted.

“Rick!”

Rick’s breath hitched in his throat.

“Rick!”

He scowled. It had to be some kind of cruel demon game. Morty’s voice coming out of this thing. “Real cute,” he growled with biting sarcasm. Then, in a single swift motion, he pulled the kitchen knife from his coat pocket with his left hand and sliced the tendril just below his wrist.

This too was a mistake.

The severed end around his wrist withered, the molded lips turned to something like the ash at the end of a cigarette, and the whole thing fell to the floor. Rick smiled, but this faltered when, from the cropped end of the tendril, three new mouthed ends grew. They split their stalk as they wiggled and writhed free, their teeth gnashing.

“Rick! Rick! Rick!” Their chants overlapped, each sounding exactly like Morty, calling out as if for help. Desperate. Scared.

Then, each mouth of the mocking hydra shot at Rick. He jumped back, and the three sets of teeth caught him by his clothes: one by each sleeve and one by the crotch of his slacks. Through gritted teeth, the mockers called out, “Rick! Rick!”

Rick tried to jerk free, but to no avail. The left sleeve biter chomped rapidly like a dog with a rag, climbing up his arm. When the one at his crotch followed the same violent motion, a short yelp slipped out of Rick’s mouth, and he twisted his body.

Apparently offended by the action, the mocker on his right sleeve ripped the coat material at his elbow, dropped the fabric to the floor, then quickly slipped up the front of Rick’s shirt, winding itself tight around his ribs. Its end slithered out of his shirt collar, behind his right shoulder. Then, it struck the side of his neck.

Dull teeth chomped the skin, bruising as they cut. Rick shouted and grabbed the tendril, and pure muscle throbbed in his grip. He could feel the crude lips drawing in more of his flesh for the teeth to gnaw. Trying to yank it off only seemed to spur it on. Sucking. Biting.

He took the knife from his left hand into his newly freed right, but he faltered. Cutting the thing off at his neck would only exacerbate things. His eyes went to the main body resting in the tub, and flipping the knife down in his hand, he took a single, lunging step, dropping to one knee at the edge of the tub and stabbing his blade into the top of the monster’s body.

The tendrils halted, and Rick heard three deep gasps from the mouths, followed by a cry from each in Morty’s voice. “Yeah, you like that, don’t ya?” Rick said, raising his arm for another stab. But the flesh around the knife wound opened like gills, and with a hiss, a mist sprayed into Rick’s face. It burned his eyes and lungs, causing him to fall into a coughing fit. He rubbed his free arm over his face. Even this defense, however, wasn’t going to stop Rick from stabbing this thing again. Turning his head, he reared the knife back.

Suddenly, the mocker on his left sleeve released and shot to his right hand, biting his wrist and causing Rick to lose his hold on the knife. It clattered to the tiled floor, and the mocker slithered up Rick’s shirt sleeve, wrapping itself tightly around the length of his arm, immobilizing it before biting him hard under the armpit.

The mocker at his crotch continued to shake violently while the other two chewed. He tried to reach for the knife with his left hand, but he was pulled to his feet by the two tendrils that had wrapped themselves around him. More mist sprayed out of the gills, tearing more coughs out of Rick. He pulled against his captors, clawing against them uselessly with his left hand, hacking while tears ran down his face. His mind raced for a solution.

A particularly deep bite on the side of his neck sent Rick’s head thudding, and the thought of those teeth mashing into his carotid artery struck terror in his brain. He had to think fast, and in doing so he sparked a dangerous plan.

With his one free hand, he reached into a coat pocket, grabbing the bottle of the ammonia-based cleaner from the first floor broom closet. He stuck the cap between his teeth and twisted the bottle, loosening the cap and unscrewing it the rest of the way with his thumb. Not being in a good position for careful measuring, he dumped the entirety of the contents into the tub, directly onto the monster’s main body. The amber liquid pooled atop the brown mass, running into its gills while a small trickle rolled down the bit of exposed drain.

Dropping the bottle to the floor, Rick quickly procured the bleach bottle from Jerry’s study. On the first bite, the sealed cap rip-corded across Rick’s teeth, shooting pain through his jaw and head, but with a renewed bite, he broke the seal and dumped most of the bleach in with the ammonia.

Immediately, the mixture began to sizzle, the chloramine gas pouring out in fat, dark columns. Rick pulled his coat up by the lapel and covered his face as tightly as he could manage.

He heard the mouths cough. They hacked and choked in that familiar voice that quickly gave way to something much more high-pitched and alien.

No, Rick thought. Not alien. Demonic.

First, the mocker at his crotch pulled away. Then the teeth under his armpit released him, and the tendril around his arm fell slack. He jerked his arm out easily now, and the thing fell to the floor, choking.

Finally, the teeth on his neck let go, the mouth gagging loudly beside his ear. Instantly, Rick turned, tearing away, feeling the drag of tendril around his ribs slipping away as he did so. He nearly dove into the shadowed alcove of the wardrobe. But just before he reached it, he slapped the second switch on the wall. He hoped it would function the same here as it did in the real bathroom. Luckily, as he rammed through the hanging clothes, pushing open the double doors, he heard the bathroom vent whir to life on the ceiling behind him.

Stumbling on his bad foot, Rick fell onto Summer’s carpet. Quickly, he sat up, slamming the doors shut with his back. He gasped, then fell into another coughing fit. His eyes and chest burned, and soon his coughing turned to retching.

 

After some time that strained his patience, Rick covered his mouth and nose once more and reentered the bathroom. He found it clear of chloramine gas, the mocking hydra dead and shriveled over the side of the tub and onto the tiled floor. The knife sat among them, and Rick picked it up. The vent continued to run noisily, but he didn’t uncover his face.

In the tub, the main body of the monster had also shriveled, allowing most of the remaining liquid to run down the drain. Rick grabbed the red jewel.

A hexagonal cut.

Back in Summer’s room, Rick wiped the blood from his neck, trying to be less aware of just how fortunate he’d been. If he’d not grabbed that ammonia back in the broom closet on a simple whim. If he’d chosen Summer’s door before Jerry’s and missed out on the bleach. Genius couldn’t account for serendipity.

He shook his head. This wasn’t important.

He returned to the dining room and faced the tragedy mask. He pushed the red jewel into one of the slots cut into the door within its eye hole. It fit perfectly. One eye down, one to go. But where was jewel no. 2?

Rick slapped his forehead when the realization hit like a brick to the face. He must have been as dim as Jerry to have so easily ignored the very obvious location of the second jewel. Again, he’d been eluded by that logic that had before seemed entirely absent in this place. Not technical logic, he reminded himself. Story logic.

Morty’s logic.

“Oh damn,” Rick said. “Jerry’s hand. F-from chapter four!”

Indeed, to fail to pick up on the pattern this place had been teaching him, he’d have to be as dumb as the very person whose super-glued hand held the key item he needed in order to progress.

And he knew how to get it open.

Making up for lost time, Rick ran his limping run to Summer’s room. Ignoring the corpse, he snatched the nail polish remover off the vanity desk. The label read “100% Pure Acetone.” He rushed over to Jerry’s study, unscrewed the polish remover’s cap, and took Jerry’s right hand in his own.

Rick poured the polish remover over Jerry’s fist and watched the glue dissolve at a rapid pace. Setting the bottle aside, he prized the fingers open, and a tiny, red jewel fell out, bouncing off the square of hardwood and onto the carpet.

“Nice.”

He grabbed the jewel and hurried back to the double doors. The tragedy mask looked haunting with its pure white face, large black eyes, and twisted frown. It’s one red pupil. Carefully, Rick inserted the second.

The dining room lights blinked out.

 _Click-click-click-click clunk_.

Rick pulled his green glow stick out of his pocket. The right door had opened inward, splitting the tragedy mask down the center. The room beyond was completely dark, aside from a small glow about halfway down the far right wall.

Slipping the glow stick’s ribbon around his neck, Rick stepped into the living room. This was the first room in this version of the house that was accurate in its position relative to the dining room. The glow on the far right was the television. Across the way stood the glass doors that led to the backyard, but Rick was certain that if he approached them, he’d only find more solid blackness just beyond.

Stepping deeper in, he cast his glow on the back of the couch, as well as the recliner to its right. But these and the television were, as Rick determined as he turned about, the only furniture. He also noticed that while the doorway to the kitchen was missing, he could see the one that led to the front hall. It stood in the corner to the right of the TV. But he couldn’t see the hall beyond it for the darkness.

Rick approached the back of the couch, his steps slow as he focused his sight on the TV. The images were fuzzy, and his eyes strained, eager to process the information. Eager, and yet anxious, as though the images might be dangerous and some part of his brain knew better than to see.

It was the garage, the window over his workbench showing night beyond the slanted, crooked blinds. The point of view turned downward, to a scattering of tools on his desk. Then further down, his khaki-clad thighs, long legs hiding knees beneath the workbench. Hands reaching up, onto his thighs. They looked soft.

Rick’s foot knocked over a tall glass bottle, and he stumbled, surprised to find that he’d walked all the way to the left of the couch. Looking down, he saw not one, but three wine bottles, two on their sides and one upright against the sofa’s front corner. At the sight, a wave of warmth blossomed in Rick’s heart, and he heedlessly bent and snatched the upright bottle. It was upon his rising that his new found smile dropped, mouth falling open.

“Beth?”

She sat on the floor with her back against the front of the couch, her legs splayed out in front. By her right hand was an empty wine glass. And by that, a wine box.

Beth sat, head turned slightly up, eyes glossy as they watched the TV. Rick knew, oh how he knew, that this Beth was a recreation, but she watched the screen with such heartfelt bliss on her face – a bliss that Rick wasn’t sure he’d ever seen in his Beth – that he felt something akin to tenderness for her. The corners of her smiling mouth twitched as though she might shed a tear, but she paid Rick no mind, and Rick quickly detached his own mind from her.

He stuck the mouth of the bottle in his own and tossed his head back, but the weight had fooled him. It was empty.

“Oh, come on. Give me a fucking break, _please_.” He dropped the bottle to the floor. “This is j-j-just a shitty, shitty replication job. A believable Beth would leave a little something for her father. Here, give me this.”

He leaned over Beth and picked up her glass before sitting down on the couch. Then he leaned over her again and pulled the wine box onto the couch with him, and when he felt the liquid slosh inside, he smiled in relief. “Thank you, Sweetie.”

He propped the box on his thigh and placed the glass under the nozzle, but before he could flip the tab, Beth placed her hand on his knee. With eyes never leaving the TV, she said, “Why couldn’t they stay like that?”

Her voice was soft and melancholic. And so much like his Beth’s.

“I don’t- W-what?”

“Don’t they look happy?”

Looking to the TV, the fuzzy images came back into focus. But this wasn’t his garage. It was the ocean.

 

_A very young Summer no more than six smiles at the camera, showing her missing front teeth. She’s wearing a purple swimsuit, and she pulls into frame a little toddler. It’s Morty, wearing a baggy T-shirt that reaches down to his knees. He has a plastic pale in one hand, and Summer pulls him down on the sand, trying to teach him how to play in it._

 

_Now, an eight year old Summer wearing a backpack looks unhappy about taking the hand of a five year old Morty, also wearing a backpack. They stand at the front door of a home Rick’s never been in._

_From behind the camera, Beth says, “Hold his hand all the way to the bus stop.”_

_Morty looks like he might cry, or has already, from the fear that came with the first day of school._

 

_Now, at a park by a river, a Morty of about ten and Summer of thirteen both laugh nervously as they edge closer toward a large goose, daring each other to take the next step forward. Morty puts a hand on Summer’s back and shoves her. She stumbles forward and screams in surprise, and when the goose hisses, they both backpedal._

_The camera rises, and from behind it, Beth calls out, “Kids!”_

 

_Now, pixelation distorts some of the view. It clears enough to reveal a young girl. She’s twelve at the most, and she’s lying on her belly on her bed. Pictures of horses decorate her wall, and before her lies an open scrapbook. The girl adjusts the clippings in her book, her legs kicking up and sliding absentmindedly against each other as she does so._

_Rick recognizes the room, though he’s never seen it like this. He recognizes his daughter, though he’s never seen her like this._

 

_Then the image changes again, and it’s as if Rick is no longer watching a screen, but instead watching from within the scene. Watching from the eyes of a ghost in the room. Or maybe he’s been watching like this already, having gradually become absorbed. Astral projecting into another moment._

_He recognizes these moments._

_Rick sees himself in the garage, working on the dream inceptors. He’d felt eager to impress Morty. The image progresses to the moment of showing the inceptor to Morty, and he can see the annoyance on his own face when Morty easily dismisses the device. But it isn’t just annoyance. There’s hurt, too._

_In the next moment, they’re flying in the ship, both talking and laughing, Morty so much so that tears build at the corners of his eyes. Rick has been drinking, but it is lack of sleep more than anything that is causing their delirium._

_The next moment is the following day. Morty sleeps on the couch. Rick enters from the kitchen, spots him, and comes up behind the sofa to look down on him. Rick watches the fondness on his own face. How it turns to something much more grave. He reaches down, his fingers brushing Morty’s face. And Morty’s eyes crack open._

_Rick remembers this very clearly. Feeling caught for that split second. But Morty merely furrows his brow, saying, “Leave me alone, Rick,” before rolling over and resuming his nap._

_Oh yeah. Rick remembers how Morty had failed a test that day and had been severely reprimanded for falling asleep in class. “Excuse me if I don’t grovel at your feet for forgiveness,” the memory of Rick says, and mystified at the clarity of this moment, Rick mouths alongside himself, “You sure as hell didn’t mind last night.”_

_The depression Rick had felt in that moment coiled itself, now as it had then, into anger in his gut. But then, before Rick’s eyes, and indeed all around him, plays a scrolling stream of so many little moments. All the lingering looks and not-so-cautious touches. Rick petting Morty’s head, and Morty holding onto Rick’s arm._

_There is the time they’d been together on the couch, sitting close. Leaning into one another. How they accidentally admit the indecency of it when they jump apart upon Jerry entering the room._

_And then, at great speed, Rick sees his own cruelty. The snapping. The curses. The trips and shoves. And Rick’s own laughter in the face of it all._

 

Rick slammed his eyes shut, and he shook his head furiously. When he looked again, he was back in the living room, the TV distant, showing only blurred nonsense. The darkness of the room didn’t do much for his now throbbing head.

With a trembling hand, Rick stuck the wine glass back under the wine box’s nozzle and flipped the tab. A small trickle fell into the glass, followed by a white chunk that released a torrent of pungent, white liquid glugging out into his glass.

He flipped the tab back and shoved the glass away from himself. “Aw, ew! What is this?” he said with disgust, though he easily recognized it as spoiled milk. He bent to put the glass on the floor, away from himself, when Beth’s fingers began biting into his knee.

Rick jerked, and the glass slipped from his hand, pouring the milk onto the floor and the toe of his shoe. He looked at Beth, whose eyes remained affixed to the television, her expression grave.

“How? How could you?” she said in a hushed voice. But Rick didn’t understand what she meant. “I trusted you. I thought… Is it my fault? I… I tried. Was it me?”

Her words strained her throat, pulling out rasped half-sobs. Crying often made Rick uncomfortable, and his discomfort at this moment was coupled with a swelling worry. Carefully, he scooted away, toward the arm of the couch, pulling his leg out of Beth’s grasp. Her lower lids pooled with a dark liquid until they overflowed, spilling down her cheeks like thick, rolling tears.

“I trusted you, Dad,” she choked out. “I didn’t want to see it. Tried so hard not to.” She snarled, and her voice turned savage. “I trusted you.”

Beth turned to face Rick, and he watched the capillaries in her eyes crawl and swell, scleras disappearing behind them. Then the vessels burst, dripping more blood down her cheeks.

Those blood-darkened eyes bore into Rick’s very soul. With joints as stiff as rusted hinges, Rick gripped the couch arm and pushed himself up on weak legs. “Beth,” he said softly. “C-come on, Beth. There’s no reason to get upset.”

Beth planted a hand on the couch and began to push herself up. Her hand, Rick saw, was now skin and bones, her tendons taught. The ends of her elbows stuck out so far that Rick expected the bone to tear through the flesh. All her fat and muscle melted away before his eyes. Her stained cheeks became hollow. Her cheek bones jutted like spikes.

Rick took small, backward steps as Beth lifted to her feet, her skinny form slipping out the top of her clothes which, falling to the floor, revealed her ribs and hip bones. And though her underwear remained, they appeared charred to her flesh, and her breasts hung like detached bags of fat supported only by the blackened cups of her bra. There was a long, curved scar at the bottom of her belly atop the only remaining bulge of fat on her body. A cesarean scar, Rick noted, and he realized with some shame that he had no idea if Beth had such a scar or not.

Suddenly, with her left hand, Beth swiped, scratching Rick across the cheek. Rick stumbled back, hitting hard on his bad ankle and tripping backwards. He hit the floor on his tailbone, but that shock was nothing compared to the shock of Beth's appearance now. She had scratched with thick, yellowed and cracked nails. She stood, hunched but towering, her elbows and curved spine positioned above her lowered head. Even with her head down, her neck bent back far enough to allow her to stare unrelentingly at Rick.

She resembled a wicked marionette, constructed only of a gnarled structure wrapped in flesh. When she stepped forward, Rick saw feet like hawk talons wearing human feet like gloves, her toenails were peeled back so that they pointed straight up at the ends of sharp toes. One of those mangled feet stepped between Rick’s legs, and a drop of blood fell from her face onto Rick’s shirt.

Beth reared one long arm back, and Rick scrambled back, kicking himself onto his feet. Beth’s clawed hand missed as she swiped for the spot he’d been, and when Rick rounded to the back of the couch, her face remained straight forward.

Because Beth froze, Rick froze as well, watching her in that unnatural position. Then he exhaled, and her head snapped to him. With a banshee scream, she planted a foot on the couch arm and leapt into the air.

Rick braced himself for impact just in time. Her feet clung to his gut, her hands striking at his raised forearms. He toppled to the floor once more. He couldn’t get at the knife in his pocket with Beth’s constant barrage.

Those red eyes. Rick hated how they stared at him. He pulled his good leg up, pressing his foot just under Beth’s ribs, and with a deep breath, he gave a forceful kick, flipping her overhead.

Quickly, Rick sat up, pulled the kitchen knife from his pocket, and jumped to his feet. He spun to face her with a growl, and it was only after that growl that Beth, who’d gotten to her feet with her back to him, turned her dead eyes on him again.

That was how Rick noticed that those hateful red eyes, despite the fervor of their stare, could not see. Thus, as Beth took a lurching step toward him, Rick carefully and quietly took a few steps to the side.

Beth lunged, swiping at his previous position. And in that moment, Rick stabbed his knife between her ribs, just beneath her outstretched arm.

He tore the knife away, and blood gushed from her wound. But when Beth screamed that ear-splitting scream, Rick could sense only rage. And when she turned on Rick, clawing over that same cheek, she paid no mind to her bleeding wound.

Rick turned and grabbed at his bleeding face, giving time for Beth to tackle him. They fell to the floor in a tangle of flailing, long limbs, and Rick desperately stabbed, cutting her in several places. Her face, her hands, and her stomach all were bloody with inconsequential wounds. But he got her by the wrists with one hand, limiting her attacks to pummeling him with her elbows.

Suddenly, she pulled up and struck Rick’s shin with her foot, cutting a gash. Rick yelled, but didn’t release his hold. Instead, he tightened his grip and rolled, throwing Beth to the floor. As he tried to climb on top of her, she thrashed and twisted in his hold until she was on her knees. But before she could stand, Rick pushed his weight onto her back, shoving her face down on the floor.

He reared back with the knife in his left hand, and finally Beth broke free of the grasp of his right. Rick only had a fraction of a second to strike before she bucked him off, so with that burst of desperate adrenaline, he took the knife with both hands and plunged the blade as hard and as deep as he could into the space between sharp shoulder blade and jagged spine.

Beth’s limbs seized. Spasms shook her form as she choked out. Rick continued to push his weight into the knife, blood seeping out of the wound. They thrashed like that until, finally, Beth sighed a gentle sigh. Her body went limp, and just before she hit the floor, a small voice floated out of her.

“Dad?”

She was dead. Once Rick was sure of it, he pulled the knife out and sat back on his knees, taking deep breaths. Before his eyes, the wound seemed to melt open, forming a gaping hole down to her heart. And in the heart’s wound, Rick saw a smattering of maggots. They multiplied, bubbling spontaneously into existence. Tiny and yellow with rings of green near one end. They were eating the heart. They were, Rick realized with a grave face, the leaches.

Heart-eaters.

 

The doorway to the front hall was blocked by a turnstile, and above that, a rounded metal gate with hinges on the right wall. By stretching his glow stick out, Rick could see that it was not the front hall beyond, but instead a narrow hall that stretched directly ahead to a shabby set of metal stairs. These stairs ascended steeply into darkness. He could only hope that they would lead to the third floor.

But the turnstile wouldn’t turn. And the metal gate wouldn’t swing inward or outward, so climbing over wasn’t an option. But the turnstile’s vertical post had a panel on the front with a handle. Rick pulled it open, and inside he saw three statues with round bases: three monkeys covering their eyes, ears, and mouth respectively.

In front of the wise monkeys were five round indentations made into the panel’s metal floor. Each hole had a label at the bottom, each with a different depiction: an apple, a pear, a plum, a strawberry, and an orange.

Rick put a hand to his perspiring forehead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can YOU solve the puzzle before the next chapter?! Good luck!
> 
> Interesting tidbit:The two doors in Summer's bedroom are a bit of a mystery. Show-canon so far depicts both doors leading into the hallway. I for one am partial to the depiction in the [Rushed Licensed Adventure](http://www.adultswim.com/games/web/rick-and-mortys-rushed-licensed-adventure), which says the door by her bed leads to a closet. But since she has a wardrobe, it might make more sense that she doesn't have a closet. *shrugs*


	6. Suspended in the Void

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back with a new chapter! Thank you to everyone showing support and excitement for this fic. I know it was a longer wait for this chapter. And hey, way to go for everyone who commented and messaged about the 3 Monkeys puzzle! Read on to see if you had it right (whether you messaged or not).
> 
> Previously: Rick found himself in a recreation of the Smith house. He found Jerry, Summer, and Beth. Beside Beth, he watched a television program featuring images of Beth and her kids through the years, as well as some personal moments between Rick and Morty. Afterwards, Beth turned into a monster, which Rick killed. Now, Rick faces a turnstile blocking the path to a stairway. Will he solve the 3 Monkeys puzzle?

Even though Rick had been doing better about waiting for after school hours to drag Morty on their adventures, when the mood hit him hard, he really couldn’t hold back from busting into the building and spiriting his grandson away before lunchtime. Which is why on this Friday, Morty figured that Rick managing to wait, despite his excitement, until 1pm must have been worth counting as a good show of restraint.

The world Rick portalled them to this time was, Morty noted, brown.

“Of course it’s brown,” Rick said, leading him across desert-like planes that stretched far to the distant gray mountains on the horizon. “This is all baked clay. Check it out.” Rick stomped his foot on the hardened ground a few times, breaking up flakes and kicking up a finely crushed dust. Morty did the same, breaking a sliver free from the ground that scraped pleasantly when he kicked it.

“Huh, that’s pretty cool, Rick.”

“Yeah, but Morty, you’re not asking the obvious question. Not really observing your surroundings. What’s caused this? Look around you, Morty. What do you see?”

With wide eyes, Morty turned about, scanning the horizon. The part of him ever eager to prove himself to Rick strained for observations. “I see mountains. Rocky mountains. A-and more mountains. And, uh.” That was when it occurred to Morty just how towering the mountains on the horizon really were. They reached upward until they disappeared from sight in strange shadows that made Morty feel more like he was looking down into a hole than up into what should have been the sky.

“Not mountains, Morty. Walls. We’re in one of this dimension’s many cave systems. Do you see a sun?”

“Um. No?”

“That’s because we’re underground.”

“So why’s it so bright in here?”

The way Rick grinned at that made Morty feel like he was bouncing on a trampoline. It was always like balancing on a razor’s edge when it came to asking Rick questions. Would you fall on the side where he would ridicule you for wasting his time with your pathetic lack of understanding, or would you fall on the more treasured side? The side where he actually enjoyed flaunting his information. The side that made you feel like you asked the “right” question. The “intelligent” question. The “worth Rick’s precious time and intellect” question. Recently, Morty had gotten better at controlling the balancing act, finding himself more likely to fall onto the preferred side when the questions pertained to a more recent discovery of Rick’s. If Morty managed to show interest in something that hadn’t yet become old news to Rick, he could get these responses.

Rick dragged Morty by the upper arm to where the smoothness of the far-stretching ground was suddenly and dangerously disrupted by a deep crack, only a foot wide but probably twenty yards deep to a surface of bright red, glowing lava that bubbled and boiled inside. The crack ran jagged across the ground, bending and twisting wildly to where it crossed and entwined with other cracks filled with the same sloshing lava.

Morty sweated at the heat, but also at how easily he might have planted his foot right in one of these lava cracks if he’d wandered around on his own. Rick smacked his back, and Morty quickly stepped backwards in case another smack followed.

“Lava. I-it’s all lit up in here because of it,” Rick explained. “Just watch your step, ya little klutz.”

Morty was going to counter the klutz accusation, but was interrupted at the sound of a loud screeching overhead. Looking up, he could just make out a form in the shadows. It dipped down into view and back up, seeming to slither, serpentine, like a needle and thread sewing in and out of the blanketing darkness. After so many adventures, it wasn’t Morty’s first instinct to fear a strange creature overhead, but clearly Rick seemed to suspect danger of it since he hushed Morty and hurried him along the crack. Rick pulled a box-like hand-held device from his coat and used it to scan the ground. What the screen showed him, Morty didn’t know, for Rick continued the cautionary quiet when he replaced the device with a chisel and broke through a thin place in the ground.

The shattering of the clay was followed by another screech, and while Rick quickly kicked at the small opening he’d made, Morty turned his sights skyward again. The serpent thing, which had made Morty think of a Chinese dragon, was nowhere near such elegance as it dove from the sky looking like a monstrous worm. Or a giant’s large intestine, its length skewered through by a spear. The head of the spear was the thing’s tongue, and even though Morty saw no eyes in his quick look of the beast, that deadly red tip seemed to stare him straight in the face.

Morty shrieked. Rick grunted and grabbed him by the back of the shirt, collar strangling out his scream. And just as the mouth of the beast hit arm’s reach, Morty found himself being pulled to falling. Together, he and Rick fell, sliding along crumbling ground, first into darkness, then into dim light where they hit even ground. While Morty choked on dust on his hands and knees, Rick rolled onto his back, pulled out his laser pistol, and all action-hero kicked onto his feet before yanking Morty to his. And while they ran down the dim tunnel, Rick aimed back, shooting overhead until shards and chunks of clay were raining down, filling up the tunnel entrance and effectively caving them in.

In this narrow tunnel, the only light came from sparse columns of lava carving their place into the walls here and there.

“Th-th-that thing was speeding right at us,” Morty said, winded from their escape. As usual, he found his heart beating rapidly. But he had to groan at himself, for it wasn’t just the usual life-threatening danger or subsequent physical exertion either. True, these things never got old enough to lose their effect. But they were not the cause of Morty’s breath catching in his throat when Rick grabbed him roughly by the back of the shirt, pulling him closer, closer, but never quite close. They weren’t what made his widened eyes feel as though they might sparkle like glittering gems. They weren’t what made his body heat to sweating, his cheeks cherrying to a degree that made him worry they might emit light.

“Yeah, it was pretty pissy,” Rick said, rather offhandedly, as he pulled two small flashlights from his coat pocket. Eyes never leaving the path down the tunnel, Rick handed one of the lights to Morty and continued onward. With not one ounce of concern for his own daring maneuvers, (so action-hero) he took a swig from his flask, pocketed it, and flicked on his flashlight before saying, “Come on. It should -eeurp- be this way probably.”

For a second, Morty watched wistfully. But he couldn’t allow himself more than that, and with a twitching half-shake of his head, he flipped on his own flashlight and followed behind. He understood why he was here with Rick, after all. He was only worth protecting as much as he could make himself useful. Which was an annoying thing to understand, and didn’t always mean he would go out of his own way to be Rick’s perfect little tool. There was a fair amount of “screw that” in Morty after all. Unfortunately, today wasn’t proving to be much of a “screw that” day, Morty realized with disappointment in himself as he hurried to keep up with Rick’s determined stride.

As they continued down the tunnel, Morty shone his light along the walls, and suddenly, after a long barren stretch, the beam landed among a row of carvings. “Hey Rick, look at this stuff.”

Rick looked back at Morty, then to the wall. The carvings, which ran vertically, seemed to be symbols, rather picture like. On top was a wide “U” shape, followed by a circular image with spikes extending from it, much like a sun. Below the sun was a vertical line, and below that, an eye like a cat’s.

“Do you know what it means?” Morty asked, pulling away from the mystifying effect of the carvings to look at Rick.

Rick, on the other hand, looked the furthest thing from mystified. With a crinkled nose and one side of his upper lip pulling up, he met Morty’s gaze. “I dunno, Morty,” he spat. “You think, ahh-I just know how to interpret whatever random mess every brainless beast scratches into a wall?” He threw his arms up, gesturing moodily to the ceiling. “Want me to ask that big wrinkly worm for an art history lesson so we can all sit around and debate the meaning of every chip in the clay you decide to shine your light at, Morty? Wanna have a discussion about what emotions they evoke? Does that sound like an appropriate use of our time to you, _Morty_?”

“Jeez, Rick. It was just a question. Damn.”

With nothing more than a silent snarl, Rick turned and continued down the path, and Morty followed. That reaction, it was neither side of the razor. It was the special, very rare third possibility of balancing on the edge. And like a razor, the reaction was cutting. For a long time, Morty didn’t understand what caused the hostility. It wasn’t mockery, like what came when Rick had to explain something that had grown boring to him. It was just mean. And when Morty did figure it out, it made sense for Rick. He hated not knowing. It didn’t matter how sensible or innocuous the lack of knowledge was. It must have embarrassed Rick.

Sometimes, Morty daydreamed about confronting Rick with his insight. To see just how Rick reacted to being figured out. It was an exciting thought, but he figured it didn’t matter much since he probably would never actually do it. Still though. He could.

*~*~*

Three wise monkeys stared at Rick. Well, two stared. One was covering its eyes.

Looking now into the little compartment on the front of the turnstile post, and more specifically at the five round indentations made into the bottom of the compartment, gave Rick that same frustration he’d experienced when looking at the carvings on the tunnel wall earlier in the day. (Was it still the same day? As if he could even begin to guess how long he’d spent in this hell-hole.) They were symbols he recognized, organized in a way that told him nothing. Sure he recognized the three monkeys. He was turning the blind one about in his hand now. The bottom of its flat, rounded base was bare. And sure, he recognized the pictures at the bottom of each indentation. An apple, a pear, a plum, a strawberry, and an orange. They were the same as the fruit coins he’d inserted into the caterpillar book back at the start of the second floor.

That felt so long ago, but really he was still only on floor two. Beyond the turnstile, and the gate above that, was a dingy, metal staircase that he expected would lead to the third floor. Was he really only half way through?

That wasn’t worth thinking about. He was going to have to deal with it no matter what. Right now he needed to figure out this monkey business. He rested the blind monkey into the slot with the pear. Just as he figured, it was a perfect fit, slipping in so that the top of the base lined up with the edge of the hole exactly. But since the dimensions for each base and each indentation were the same, he had to figure out which monkey went with what fruit.

He picked up the mute monkey.

“I get it,” Rick said, plopping onto his butt on the floor before the turnstile post. “Mute monkey, equals dumb monkey, equals Jerry. Hah!” Then, his smile dropped and his mouth fell open as his mind clicked. Jerry. He _was_ dumb. Hanging from a rope with his tongue all swollen in his mouth. And it was with that thought that Rick understood how the monkeys were connected with the fruit. Because he also remembered that he’d gotten the fruit coins from dolls, and one of those dolls was hanging by its neck.

And poor blind Beth sitting on the floor with her glass, just like the doll with its paper cup. And hear-no-evil Summer with her face pressed against the sink. Er, no, it was the doll that was pressed against the sink, but Summer’s position against her mirror was no different.

That was all very well and clever, but it was little help to know which monkey represented which family member if he couldn’t remember which fruit he’d gotten from which doll. Usually, Rick had an exceptionally sharp memory. But the arduous march through the cage had clouded his mind. Exhaustion of both the physical and mental variety had really worn him down by this point, and he didn’t have the ol’ Dutch courage running through him to clear the mental fog. Panic spurring confusion. Confusion spurring panic. What a stupid loop to let himself fall into. If given the choice between a drink and a hint, right now he’d take the former.

A hint would be good too though.

Rick gasped. “The note.” Leaning and reaching into his back pocket, he pulled out the form he’d gotten from the nurse’s station. The one Morty had written the clue for the caterpillar book on. Morty’s message, “As people, plenty stray off,” didn’t prove particularly relevant at this stage though. But having Morty’s handwriting close was oddly comforting. The fog of confusion and frustration seemed to ebb as he looked at it, and for a while, that’s what Rick did. He looked at Morty’s handwriting.

“It’s you leading me, right Morty? The demon, she… She’s attacking me, but you know I’m gonna kick her ass when I get to the end of this thing, right?” In his mind, he saw the memories of the dolls and the family overlap, and in that mental calm, his recall neared its usual sharpened state.

Jerry was the pear. Rick removed the see-no-evil monkey from the pear’s slot and replaced it with the speak-no-evil statue. Beth, see-no-evil, had had the apple coin in her cup, so Rick matched the statue and slot accordingly. And the Summer doll’s fruit, the strawberry, had clung to the side of its head like the blood that poured from her ear.

When Rick put the hear-no-evil monkey in its slot, and all three monkeys faced him properly, the metal gate above the turnstile swung in, shocking Rick and conking him in the head at the same time. A silent laugh bubbled out of him as he rubbed his head and got to his feet. He folded the note, “Not too shabby, huh Morty?” and slipped it back into his back pocket. Then, with kitchen knife at his side, Rick pushed his way through the turnstile and approached the staircase. He climbed, the green glow stick against his chest lighting up the path as he ascended higher and higher and higher until finally he reached a door.

Hanging on the door was the triangle map. Now, it was the third section from the bottom that was marked through with a highlighter. The third floor. It was depicted on the map as taller than the rest, and Rick had been curious about what that would mean when he reached it. Supposing it was time to find out, he opened the door.

 

The room was heavy with the stench of manure, wood chips, and animal piss. Lit by a gas lantern hanging by a wooden door across the way, Rick found himself standing in some sort of barn room. The walkway to the other door was dirt, and to the left was a row of five small stables. They were separated by wooden beams, but a quick inspection revealed evidence of foul play to the wooden gates in front. The first stable gate was resting closed against a broken latch. The second gate, also sporting a busted latch as well as hinges, had been forced inward, into the stable. The boards of the third and fourth gates looked like they’d taken the brunt of an explosion, and when Rick knelt close, he found what appeared to be beastly teeth and claw marks marring the splintered wood.

The stables were all mostly empty, aside from some battered and scattered hay and some marks in the dirt that were probably left by hooves. The final stable’s gate had been pulled from the hinges and dragged out into the middle of the floor, just before the wooden door. The middle board on it had been busted out, and under the lantern light, blood glistened on the inner edges of the remaining boards.

Rick pulled the gate out of the way, finding in the bottom of the door a break in the wood like an inverted “V” which, along with the two inch gap below the door, was probably plenty sufficient for whatever creature had come in to terrorize the livestock. What was more surprising was the floor he’d uncovered by moving the gate: more blood, and many thick tracks raked into the dirt. Rick imagined little hooves kicking frantically as some beast dragged the poor, defenseless grazer through the hole in the door.

“But really, it’s all just decoration, right? Not that I can’t take on whatever ankle biter mighta done this.” Rick laughed. “I’d like to see you try and throw something at me that even starts to compete with what _my_ _own_ _daughter_ turned into. Now _that_ was a whole ‘the stuff of nightmares’ thing. Gonna be pretty hard to top that.” He grabbed the handle and pulled the door open.

The drastic transition from the stuffy stables to the breezy open space Rick stepped out on caused him to shiver. The floor was narrow, metal, and clinked under his steps. His eyes blinked rapidly against the intense darkness, and he raised his knife cautiously. Distantly, but all around and above and below, came sounds of machinery clanging and whirring and grinding, telling Rick that he was no longer traveling through small, enclosed rooms.

The lantern light from the room behind him, even when paired with the green glow stick at his chest, did little more than light the area immediately around him. But as Rick peered about, squinting and widening his eyes over and over, he found that there were several very distant points of red light. Soon his eyes adjusted just enough to make out a number of darker streaks that traveled through the air high above. He reached back into the barn room and pulled the gas lantern off its nail, bringing it out into the open place and raising it high.

The dark streaks were catwalks. Lots of them, crisscrossing higher and higher into the void. Rick turned about, scanning his surroundings with the lantern. He saw that he stood now on a landing that connected to two more catwalks, one veering left and one veering right. He took hold of the railing to look below. Just as above, below proved to continue the void, with more crossing walkways suspended farther and farther below. He couldn’t make out anything to the sides aside from the odd points of red light glowing far away.

Rick looked between the two paths before him. “Last time I thought I had to make a choice, I just ended up backtracking and going both ways anyhow. Remember that? With the doors to Jerry and Summer?”

The hissing of the gas lantern was all Rick got in response. He scowled and stepped onto the path to his left only to stop immediately upon the lantern light illuminating a trail of red liquid. Stepping back, knife at the ready, he proceeded to the right path. This one appeared to be clear of blood.

“Yeah, I think I’ll take the path less traveled by, thaank youverymuch.”

Walking down the long catwalk, Rick’s footsteps clinked loud and clear. The hissing of the gas lantern was a welcome companion. The ever present mechanical grinding seemed to neither become nearer nor further. For several minutes, Rick felt like one blot of light and life traveling in the void, and he was starting to wonder if he would ever find an end to the path. A part of him wondered if he was falling for a treadmill trick, and from time to time, he even peeked back in case he’d find himself right off from the barn door landing he’d left from.

He almost didn’t hear the whirring as it sped toward him. From the corner of his eye, he saw the ring of metal, and its barrage of sharp nails jutting all around, spinning and flying right for his face.

“Haah!” Rick shouted, jumping back and swinging his knife. His blade collided with the metal ring, scraping and knocking the thing out of the air. It hit the catwalk and rolled on its side, on its not-quite-even jutting points. The whole thing was about the circumference of a standard compact disc, and in the center of the ring was a large, pale bulb. Rick lifted a foot, but stopped short when he realized that stomping would only result in getting a nail through his foot. Instead, he got to his knee, sat the lantern on the catwalk, and picked the whole thing up by the bulb.

In his hand, the thing ceased movement. The pale bulb felt like stuffed cheesecloth, and two large, black ovals were drawn on so that it looked like the head and face of a typical gray alien. The gray alien had a body as well, though far too small and thin to be proportional to the head. Its loose little body was impaled all around by the rusty nails, suspending it in the center of the ring. The whole thing was like an alien riding in a tetanussy flying saucer. Rick took his knife and sliced the head from the body, and when the saucer fell to the floor, it did not continue to roll.

Rick picked the lantern back up, stood, and dropped the doll head off the side of the catwalk, watching it fall until it disappeared in the darkness.

He continued his walk, and finally he found himself face to face with a new door, this one on the front of a small, cylindrical building. It would be barely big enough for a closet, but the path ended here so Rick figured it must be the best choice. He opened the door.

Huddled in the cylindrical closet, its bony back illuminated by the lantern, was a person. They were hunched, head bent forward below hiked shoulders. Streaming, pitiful whimpers wavered out of the young one.

Rick’s eyes went wide, his heart swelling and pinching simultaneously. “Morty?!” he said, equal parts eager and anxious.

The kid stood, nakedness shining under the light, head still hung out of sight. Breath hitched and hiccuped as the kid turned to face Rick, and Rick’s eye twitched at the sight. This boy was shaved bald, his scalp left gray. His hands, which at first seemed to be covering his eyes, were in truth sunken into his face, the skin of his wrists fused over his eye sockets. From the boy’s mouth, liquid streamed to the floor. Drool, tears, and mucous.

The boy stepped out of the closet, onto the catwalk, and Rick stepped back.

“OK, what are you doing?” Rick asked, rather uselessly as the boy only continued to sob. Rick didn’t exactly feel fear for the boy so much as discomfort. He seemed too pitiful to be a threat. But Rick already had a hard time dealing with tears and crying. This was way past the line. “This is weird. Hey, I’m just gonna get by you here, all right?” Pressing himself against the railing, he tried to slip around the boy, and the boy turned to continue facing him. “Look, I already have a sniveling kid I need to find, and he’s decidedly less creepy than you. No offense.” With the closet to his side, Rick reached his lantern into the room, unwilling to entirely turn away from the boy. But even with the light, he found the closet to be entirely barren. “Seriously? A fucking dead end?”

The boy clamped his mouth closed. “Mhurk!” And a churning rose audibly in his gut. At the sound, Rick quickly slipped back around, backing away from the boy and the closet. Before he could do anything else though, the boy vomited, spraying his clear, viscous liquid at Rick. It sprayed across the front of his shirt, burning the cotton away like a barrage of cigarette burns.

“Hey!” Rick spat, and the boy replied by charging at him, elbows swinging. Rick swung his knife, slicing him across one arm. It was only a surface cut, but enough to make the boy patter back and cry, more liquid pouring from his mouth. Then, again he closed his lips against the churning of his guts. He spewed, and Rick swung the lantern. The goop hit the glass, and it shattered magnificently, leaving the fire burning undiffused.

The boy lunged, and Rick swung the lantern, cage and fire crashing into the side of his head and knocking him clumsily to his knees. “Uwa. Ahaaa.” he cried softly.

Rick sat the battered but still burning lantern on the floor, then rushed the boy, dropping down before him and shoving his knife into the side of the boy’s neck. The boy rose, pulling Rick’s hand up with him, before leaning forward and forcing Rick back. Losing balance, Rick fell to his butt. The boy closed his mouth again, preparing to hurl. Rick jerked at the knife, trying to loose it from the boy’s neck, and when he finally tore it free, he fell onto his back, knocking the lantern over and sending it rolling off the side of the catwalk.

The boy’s sniveling face hovered over Rick, a sculpture of angular shadows in the green of Rick’s glow stick. His pursed lips were a straining dam ready to explode over Rick’s face. With a burst of panic-fueled adrenaline, Rick pressed his shoe to the boy’s chest and kicked. The boy stumbled back, spewing his vomit down his own naked chest, where it sizzled and burned the skin black. Rick kicked to his feet, grabbed the boy by the elbows, and threw his weight into flinging him into the side railing, flipping him over.

Down, down, down the boy fell, his crying, which remained oddly unalarmed, growing ever distant until it was lost among the machinery. Rick panted, then laughed. “Come on!” he shouted. “What else ya got for me?” He cackled into the void, tears prickling the corners of his eyes.

The laughter died. Rick sighed, pulling away from the railing. He felt a little more vulnerable with just his glow stick for light, but he wasn’t about to let that change his behavior. Before beginning his trek back down the catwalk, Rick turned once more to the empty closet, stepping closer to shine his glow inside. And it was a good thing he did, because this time he found something. White markings fluorescing on the closet floor. The lantern light must have been too bright, Rick figured, although it was still strange. The markings reflected as if he were holding a black light to them rather than a glow stick. Stepping in to stand over them, he could easily make out the writing done in wide strokes.

**YOU’RE NOT NEEDED ALIVE**

“No shit,” Rick said, then turned and headed back toward the stables.

He arrived at the fork and took the bloody path, which was equally long and quite regularly blotted in shiny red that he made a point to step over and around except for the few instances when his foot slid suddenly. He had two more encounters with flying saucers and managed to knock them out of the air and decapitate them with his knife easily enough.

The walk was lonely.

Reaching the end of this catwalk, Rick scowled as he came face to face with another small, cylindrical room. Surely it wasn’t another dead end, right? Where else would he go? This concern was eased a degree when he reached for the doorknob and found more fluorescent material reacting to his glow stick in the form of a palm print on the knob. Maybe this hadn’t been on the other door. Maybe this meant he was on the correct path. Maybe, even, it meant Morty had been here.

Or maybe it was another crying naked boy.

Knife at the ready, Rick opened the door.

This room was the same dimensions as the one before. However, in the center, coming down from the ceiling, was a ladder leading up to a trapdoor. Rick lifted his glow stick on its ribbon and looked the ladder up and down, and as he brought the stick closer to the trapdoor, he found another glowing hand print.

Hand prints, Rick mused. He’d felt nausea at the moldy hand prints in Summer’s room, and before that, he’d been comforted by the sooty hand print he’d touched on the nursery window. He didn’t know what to feel for this one. Perhaps wariness. Perhaps it was better not to think about it.

Not thinking didn’t stop Rick from, after climbing the ladder, placing his hand directly over the print to push the door open. The door smacked and clanged against the metal ceiling of the cylinder room, and he climbed up, finding only another ladder, which he climbed, ascending blindly. He climbed until he could see nothing below or above. Then he climbed some more. Finally, he found himself climbing through an opening into a new room.

This room was lit. And holy hell was it ever humid. Steam floated through the muggy corridors. Rick’s shoes squeaked against the white tiled floor. The only way to describe this room would be to say, if a school shower room had been stretched and folded into a labyrinth. As Rick moved forward, he found the walls – a mixture of thick block walls and plastic stall walls – turning sharp into narrow passageways. The sound of spraying showers came from somewhere to the right or behind depending on the turn Rick took. But even the stall walls reached to the tiled ceiling, so there was no looking over the walls to find his way through this maze.

“Hello?” Rick called, hearing his voice echo.

“Aaaah!” came a cry that sent Rick’s back rod-straight. It wasn’t like the cries of the boy in the closet. It sounded like a toddler. Then, _bang_! The stall wall to his right shook. He ran forward, quickly turning the corner to the right and looking back at the other side of the wall. A small streak of red colored the stall wall where the thing had hit.

“Aaah! Aaaah!” the cry sounded from the left. A flurry of skidding scratches on the floor and more thuds to the walls came from around the next corner. There was a snarl and a bark, and Rick ran, taking the left and finding more blood, as well as streaks of mud, on the floor. Rick wiped the sweat from his forehead, panting at the humidity. The next cry told him to take another left. He jumped over the blood, slid on the damp tile, and kicked into a sprint.

Drops of blood, crying, and beastly growls all showed Rick how to navigate the maze. Left, right, straight, right, right. He was always just behind the beast and its victim. Then he heard a door slam, and when he skidded around the next corner, he was out of the maze and in open space before the shower room door. The floor here was especially bloody, the dark pools coming to a head at a drain hole in the middle of the floor.

Rick had to wonder if whatever animal he’d been hearing was really capable of opening that door, especially since it needed to be pulled inward. The bloody drain hole was hard to ignore as well. He peered in, at first standing fully erect overhead since his last two encounters with drains were still pretty fresh in his mind. But something shiny down in the hole caught his curiosity. And since he had a knife to deal with any drainage hairs, he didn’t hesitate much to crouch down and get a closer look.

The shining thing was actually plastic reflecting the overhead lights. Rick reached in, the hole grazing the sides of his hand as he slipped it in to the wrist. Fingers pinched the plastic, and he pulled it out. It was a Ziploc bag, wet with water and blood. But sealed safely inside was, to Rick’s surprise, a black flash drive. He opened the bag and pulled the flash drive out. There was nothing out of the ordinary about it that he could see. A standard four gigabyte stick with a slider to bring the USB plug in and out.

He pocketed the drive and dropped the plastic bag on the floor. With that, he rose and went for the door.

Another landing; another set of forking catwalks. More shivering at the drastic change from muggy bathroom to black void. Choosing which path to take was easier this time when he heard that same toddler-esque cry coming from the right path. Again, he took the path dirtied with blood. Rick ran, footfalls clanging, then coming to an abrupt halt.

He stood several feet away from the source of the cries. Lying on its side, staring at Rick through panicked eyes, was a brown goat. Just a kid. Its back leg was caught in the teeth of a-

Rick stepped back. It was a wolf, its fur full and silvery in the glow. The wolf growled low at Rick, then it shook its head wildly, yanking the poor goat’s leg from side to side. “Aaaah! Aaaah!” the kid cried out.

The wolf dropped the leg, but the goat wasn’t going anywhere in its condition. And when the wolf straightened upright, it stood with impressive posture. Nearly four feet tall from foot to head. It looked, Rick couldn’t deny, magnificent. The wolf’s upper lip trembled against his growl, then he barked, a booming sound that rattled the catwalk, before grabbing the goat by the leg once more, turning, and running away, the goat dragging pitifully against the floor.

Rick shook his head and took off after it. But the wolf was much faster.

Again, the catwalk ended at a closed door, this one attached to a much larger room that he couldn’t see around. How that wolf could manage to go through these doors, he didn’t know, but of course he understood by this point that physics didn’t apply to the natives the way it did him. He opened the door.

This square room was dark aside from Rick’s light and the static showing from a CRT TV sitting atop a simple TV stand. This stand stood at the head of what Rick recognized as an examination table. The table, sporting thin, gray upholstery, was laid flat. But Rick didn’t take much time looking these over because on the floor, crying in a puddle of its own blood, was the goat kid.

The wolf was nowhere to be seen, but this was unmistakably the same goat. It was kicking its clearly broken back leg, and its throat and side were both spilling blood. His tongue was lolling against the floor, sometimes licking at it weakly. His crying was weak now as well. His eye found Rick, and he stared at him almost pleadingly. Rick wondered if the kid thought he could save him.

Rick stood over the goat, brow knitted as he looked down on him. “Asshole wolf couldn’t even be bothered to finish you off, could it?” He knelt, cradling the goat’s head in his hand, feeling the bristly hair. How it scratched his skin pleasantly. The goat was pulling his head back, trying to look back at Rick. Rick covered its eye, pressed the blade of his knife to its throat, then slit.

He pulled away, standing and backing off while the poor kid bled out.

It didn’t do much good to watch, so Rick set to searching the room. He checked the table and TV stand. None of the buttons on the face of the TV worked. There were some loose AV cables plugged into and tucked beside the TV. The examination table was totally barren.

It was when Rick left these center pieces to search the walls that he saw, while walking past the dead goat, something in its gaping mouth. Something inorganic. He quirked his brow as he crouched to inspect.

Near the back of the goat’s mouth, sealing off the opening of its throat, was a plastic block. It hadn’t been there before, Rick thought. There was no way. On the face of the block were three ports: one little yellow-rimmed port, one little white-rimmed port, and one USB port.

Rick blinked several times.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My tumblr: triplex-tyrant.tumblr.com


	7. Matryoshka (Beating)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Previously: We flashed back to the adventure that started the story. Rick solved the 3 Monkeys puzzles and entered the third floor. Here he found a wolf and its prey, a young goat. Inside the dead goat, Rick found a port for a flash drive.

The mouth of the tunnel opened up to a dark, rounded chamber, and here the narrow beams of Rick’s and Morty’s flashlights ran across what Morty could only identify as two giant statues. The statues sat face to face with one another, legs crossed, knees almost touching, and towering as tall as four Ricks balancing on each others’ shoulders. Shielding these on the far side was a stone wall that tapered into steps on either side and gave only a narrow walkway across its top. Extending from the middle of this wall was a platform, nearly as narrow and hanging in the space between the two statues’ large faces.

The beam of Morty’s flashlight darted all about in his overwhelmed attempt to take in the details, and his motions only ceased when Rick laid a hand on his shoulder in a silent but firm demand to stop and pay attention. Slowly, Rick shone his light up and down the statue on the right. The depicted creature, like the other, had a humanoid enough posture, but its features were anything but. Its feet, situated under bent knees, were like giant talons, and the hands resting on its knees were like a hairless cat’s, fingers spread and claws out. Bat-like wings sat folded against its back. Its head disturbed Morty the most. It looked like a very large doberman, its muzzle long and sharp, and matching the face of the statue across from it.

“That’s the one we’re after,” Rick said, his voice hushed, almost a whisper. “That’s the one ‘at’s gonna bring me the big bu–uurrrp–cks. Gonna be the big money maker, Morty.”

“Um, the one what?” Morty asked, eyes never leaving the subject. “W-what even is it?”

Rick took a drink from his flask, and while he screwed the cap back on, he replied, with all the passion of discussing the weather, “A demon.”

Now Morty’s eyes snapped to Rick. “A _what_?! A demon?! L-l-like those things on that space station that looked like my family that you made me melt?”

“No no, Morty. How many times do I have to explain this? Those were just clones who were _possessed_ by demonic alien spirits. These here are the real deal.”

“Wait,” Morty said, his brain struggling with the information, “so are these demons or just aliens that are like demons?”

“Jesus, Morty, they’re demons. They’re aliens. They’re aliens that are what civilizations for millennia have referred to as demons. How is that not perfectly clear?” Morty still looked dumbfounded, so Rick went on, pulling a tetrahedral device out of his coat pocket. “Look. This is what I came here to use.” He pressed two round buttons on joint sides of the metal device, and two rings of white light came to life in response.

“W-what is that?”

“I’ll let you know. After we wake that thing up, you’ll see for yourself just what an amazing and cool invention this baby really is.”

Maybe Rick had expected a little more interest from Morty for his demon cage, but Morty’s solemn eyes only returned to the behemoth of subject. “So these aren’t just statues then,” Morty said, his hushed voice squeaking.

“That’s right. They’re hibernating.”

“How are you gonna wake it up?”

“ _You’re_ gonna wake it up. With this.” Rick pulled a small, plastic block from his coat and plopped it in Morty’s hand. It felt like a bar of soap, and yet Morty already knew to feel apprehensive of it. And before he could even ask, Rick proved his apprehension right when he said, “That’s C4. It’s a--”

“I know what it is!” Morty extended his arm, holding the bar away from himself and Rick. Thanks to video games, he had a decent enough idea. “It’s like dynamite.”

Rick scratched his head. “Well, I mean, in the most basic sense I guess you’re right. Look, y-y-you’re not gonna blow your little arm off. I’ve got the remote detonator right here.” From his pocket, Rick pulled out a black stick with a red button on top. He waved it. “All you have to do is climb up on that wall, get on that platform, and stick that,” he motioned to the C4 that Morty was still holding away from the both of them, “to the end of the demon’s face. Just right on the snout, Morty. Then I’ll detonate it, the demon will wake up, and _wam_! I’ll put this baby to work.” He held up the metal pyramid, gripping it by its base.

“Now remember,” Rick continued, “we want the cool one, on the right, with the talons and claws. Not the doofy one on the left with like a monkey body or whatever it’s supposed to be.”

Morty looked at the hibernating demons. The explosive in his hand. Rick’s excited and expectant expression. The very narrow wall.

“Oh man. Oh jeez.”

*~*~*

Rick slipped his knife in his back pocket before grabbing the goat around both sets of ankles and lifting the dead weight. He turned and plopped the corpse on the examination table, where it fell on its side, mouth gaped wide. He then pulled the A/V cables out from beside the TV, where silent static danced on the screen, and decisively plugged both cables into the properly color-coded ports in the plastic block in the goat’s mouth. It was only when Rick pulled the flash drive out of his pocket that he remembered how unnatural this situation was. But it wasn’t like he was in a position to challenge it, so he slipped the drive past those blunt teeth and into the USB port. He removed his hand and wiped the saliva onto his pant leg, all while his widened eyes watched the screen in anticipation.

The static blinked out, making way for an obnoxious bright blue that in turn flickered away for a dark image to take its place. It was a video. The lighting was poor, leaving the figure cloaked in a hazy mix of black and orange. Rick found himself trying to look around his own reflection in the black to make out just what it was he was supposed to be looking at, and even then a pesky scattering of pixels blurred the top of the screen in a jarring mosaic. The subject of the video seemed to be human, positioned close to the camera and recorded from the bust up. The only audio to be heard was the crackling of exhales into whatever sensitive microphone had been used during recording. Then, after a moment, the figure spoke.

“--couldn’t get out. I didn’t know how, so--”

Rick gripped the edge of the examination table, fingers digging into the gray upholstery. It was Morty’s voice. The figure was Morty.

“--- sorry! I just wanted --- -- help me. But --- tricked me. -on’t let her --- the code -- the fail-safe. -----------”

Rick’s teeth clenched as he shoved his hand back into the goat’s mouth. He grabbed the audio cord, bending it, mentally begging the connection to come through.

“--- because she wants out. Ba’dendti. She needs the code. Don’t let her get inside y--- mind. She can show you what’s in your own mind, but she can’t bring it -- ---- if --- don’t let her in. --------”

Rick sweated as he adjusted the wire, eyes unwilling to break away from Morty. From time to time, the nebulous pixelation broke away, and Rick could almost make out some features in the silhouette. Morty. His boy.

“Did you see how Ba’dendti does it? For me, it was a vision. And when I described what I saw, that’s when she got inside me. Inside my head. ---- using me to trick you, Rick! She’ll get you to let her inside your own mind. Or she’ll kill you with the monsters she got from mine. Yy-you gotta get outta here! You’re not needed alive.” Harsh breaths rattled through the speakers. Behind the pixels, Morty lifted his hands and rubbed at his face. Rick was sure some of those crackles were sobs. “Just leave, Rick. I --- selfish.

“------- -- infinite number of Mortys. Let’s just forget all of this. Please, I… I-I’m so sorry. I fucked everything up. Just like always. I’ll get you out. Forget the map. It --- - mistake. --- - disgusting, ---pid piece of --------”

Another bend of the wire sent a jolt up Rick's arm, and he yanked it away from the goat’s mouth. Pixelation consumed the image on the screen, and the audio turned to a high-pitched whine. Then, both video and audio blanked, leaving a white screen to sear Rick’s eyes, though only for a moment before the searing white cut back to Morty. Morty, now standing further back, the frame capturing everything from his torso up, including the bars surrounding him, and the curtain they held over his face.

POP. The television shut off, the sound of static electricity bouncing across the screen lingering for only a moment before Rick was left in silence in the dark room, only his glow stick left to give him sight.

“Wait,” Rick breathed, reaching for the television and pressing the power button to no effect. “Wait, Morty, come back.” He reached back into the goat’s mouth, unplugged the drive, and plugged it back in. Nothing. He tried again and again. “Lemme see that again, I… I didn’t catch all that. Morty, I need to see you--”

 _Snap_. The plug on the end of the drive broke off, stuck inside its port. Rick lifted the useless stick before his face in a shaking hand, then brought his other hand up to steady it.

Suddenly, the whole room trembled, and on instinct Rick whipped the kitchen knife back out of his pocket, drive stick still gripped tightly in his left hand. He listened to the mechanical humming all around him and felt the motion of the room, determining that what he was experiencing was the room steadily rotating. After several seconds, the motion stopped with a clunk from beyond the walls, and Rick rocked minimally on his feet. He slipped the drive stick into his pants pocket.

With no other doorway aside from the one he’d entered from, and having found nothing else within the room aside from the middle furnishings, Rick made his way to the door. Beyond, he found himself in a new hall, this one surrounded by curved walls embedded with a series of small, circular red lights. Rick felt grateful for the visual aid, but even with the red lights, he couldn’t see very far down the path. Still, it wasn’t as though he had any other options. In fact, having only the one linear path should have been comforting. But he didn’t believe he’d feel any comfort until he saw Morty again.

He walked, thinking he could feel the tiny weight of the drive stick in his pocket. He wished he could have talked to Morty. Tell him it was OK that he messed up. Tell him it happens. He’d never told Morty that before. Not really. And as for whatever he’d wanted the demon’s help for, that was OK too.

It wasn’t like Rick really didn’t understand. He’d only believed it was better to go on as though he didn’t. To not think about it. Now he wasn’t sure.

Rick’s steps slowed to a stop, and he leaned against the curved wall. He wiped the sweat from his face with his palm, then pressed the heel of his hand against his eye. The energy with which he’d traversed the first of the third floor had been sapped, and he could feel himself crashing. “I’m a genius for fuck’s sake. Things were never supposed to get like this.”

 

The hallway at last opened up to another smaller corridor, and before Rick stood a cement wall lined with three metal doors. They looked to Rick like the doors of a submarine: rounded on top, each with a large, red handwheel, and above these, round windows too dirty and dark to look through and covered by horizontal bars. The second and third doors also sported thick cables that looped through their window bars and down to their handwheels where the cables were fastened with thick padlocks. These cables would keep the wheels from being turned so long as the padlocks held them in place.

Beyond these doors, Rick could hear a heavy, rapid beating. Perhaps more mechanical sounds like those he’d heard while traversing the earlier catwalks. It was with a tired, heavy weight that he turned the handwheel on the first door. With the rotation of the internal dog lever, the door’s hermetic seal popped, and he pushed his way inside.

This was a large room, decorated with two rows of four long, black-topped tables and headed at the far end by a wide desk. When Rick released the door, its weight pushed it closed again. The rapid beating could still be heard just beyond the walls. As he stepped deeper in, he came to determine that he was in something like a school science lab. The black-topped tables had cabinets made into them and were surrounded by metal stools. He also found that his glow stick was not the only source of light, for on the desk at the head of the room sat three digital clocks. Their displays read 6:00, .12:00, and .6:00 in red block numbers.

A few of the tables were topped with some interesting, though not entirely out of place, decorations. The first Rick crossed, laying on its back, exposed organs a little loose in the open cavity of its torso, was a plastic anatomy model. He stopped to inspect the thing. The model ended below the abdomen, and its face depicted only an emotionless mouth and closed eyes. It might have been a creepy decoration to somebody, and perhaps could have felt unsettling in a different setting, but if anything Rick felt a sort of fondness for the thing. The model must have been screwed into the tabletop, as it wouldn’t budge when he tried to lift it. Just below the model, like a foot stone at a grave sight, was a small, blank plate, rectangular and embedded in the tabletop. The plate felt like metal to Rick’s touch, and each corner bore a tiny peg hole.

He picked up each organ in turn and placed them back, as they appeared entirely ordinary for an anatomy model in a science lab. Then, as he was turning the plastic liver in his hand, a foul stench wafted into his nose. He pushed the plastic liver away, holding it at arm's length, and the odor diminished. Then, warily, he brought it nearer to his nose again.

A single whiff was all it took to tear a gag from Rick’s throat, and he dropped the liver onto the table. The stench of rot remained on his fingers, and he scrubbed them uselessly on his pant legs. With a heavy huff to blow the smell away, he left that first table.

On another table was another supine figure of a human form from the torso up, its eyes similarly closed and emotionless, its jaw opened wide as if gasping for air. Rick recognized it as a CPR dummy. Below this was another metal plate, exactly the same as the first. Also like the anatomy model, the dummy was fastened to its table. Though as far as he could tell, not that he checked too thoroughly, this figure did not stink of rot or anything else.

The only other occupied table held not a screwed down figure, but a scattering of bones. Strewn across the tabletop were a skull, several ribs, a humerus, a splintered ulna and radius, and a section of spine. These bones were not plastic. In fact, they looked and felt very real. And not very well preserved at that, for they were extremely browned and rough, damaged by decay.

Somewhere beyond the walls, a wolf howled. For a long moment, Rick held his breath, listening. Then he left the table of bones.

The digital clocks on the front desk were free of cords and stood on tiny peg legs. Rick lifted the middle one and saw that the red dot on it and the third meant that they were set to pm. It was interesting that none of the three clocks had changed despite Rick knowing he surely must have been in this room for a few minutes at the very least.

He was so caught up with these clocks and the objects decorating the other tables that he only now noticed, as he sat the middle clock back down, that there was a decoration he’d missed. It sat on the desk just behind the clocks, and Rick’s brow rose at what was admittedly an impressive golden statue of a Sphinx resting atop a block perch. This statue, like the anatomy doll and CPR dummy, would not budge when Rick tried to move it. It, along with the times on the clocks, did however remind him of a conversation he’d had with Morty not too long ago, and given the situation, he couldn’t help but suspect a connection.

Morty had just come to him, having heard on TV the Sphinx’s riddle for Oedipus, and was excited to try it on Rick. “How did you live fourteen years of your life without hearing that riddle till just now?” Rick had asked, to which Morty had quipped some snarky remark about Rick sounding like every other old person making a big deal over him being unfamiliar with something he had no reason to be familiar with to begin with. Remembering that now put a smile on Rick’s face, but at the time, he’d been adamant in trying to convince the kid how stupid of a riddle his new discovery really was.

“What’s so stupid about it? What has four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening? Man. That’s clever and unexpected.”

“It’s not clever and unexpected, it’s a lie. Man doesn’t have four legs in the morning and three in the evening, Morty. It’s six pm. Do you see anything that looks like a third leg comin’ outta me? And my dick doesn’t count, cuz that’s here allll day, sweetheart.”

“Eugh, Rick. It’s symbolic. The third leg is a cane. Evening means old age.”

“That’s exactly why that riddle is a complete mess. Evening means old age, third leg means cane. Y-y-you can’t just say anything means anything, Morty! Riddles only work if they’re possible to solve. That right there is a piece of shit misleading word game, and the Sphinx deserved to die just for thinking it up in the first place.”

“Well. _I_ still think it’s clever.”

Rick had to hope that whatever riddle or puzzle he was meant to solve now wouldn’t be as convoluted as the original Sphinx’s. Luckily, he felt he was off to a good start. Figuring out that the peg legs of the clocks meant that they could be placed on the metal plates was almost automatic. Knowing which table each of the clocks belonged to was not. None of the tables’ occupants even had legs, so the correlation to the Sphinx riddle seemed to end with the clocks. That being the apparent case, Rick took each clock and simply placed them in order of which table he’d passed on his way to the front desk. Morning for the anatomical model, noon for the CPR dummy, and then he slipped the six pm clock onto the plate before the strewn, decomposing bones.

BUZZZZ!

Rick believed the rejectingnoise to be coming from the clocks themselves until he saw the swarm spewing forth from the mouth of the CPR dummy. A growing cloud of long wings and dangling legs homed in on Rick. A strange subspecies of crane fly, the swarm was on him almost before he knew it, clinging to his clothes and biting him anywhere his skin was exposed. His hands, neck, and elbow. Over his stomach where the crying boy had burned away his shirt. But his face got the worst of it.

He smacked at the bugs clinging to his flesh, then tried to swat their successorsout of the air before they could land. Arms flailing, feet turning, hands smacking long bug bodies out of his hair and off his clothes, Rick frantically fended off the offending crane flies. Another sharp bite was landed just beside his inner eye, tearing a panicked shout from him as his hand smacked across the front of his face, smearing bug guts and rolling the soggy, stick-like corpse across the bridge of his nose.

For each crane fly Rick killed, he saw now that a new one would float its way out of the dummy’s mouth. He figured that he needed to remove that clock from its plate, but when he spun on his heel to go after it, a burning pain erupted in his right ankle and his knee buckled, sending him crashing to his hands and knees. He shouted, and a fly bit the side of his mouth. He bit it back, teeth pulling it into his mouth so he could spit the bitter thing back out. Another buzzed harshly against his ear, so he smacked it, and there it remained, plugging that ear as he pulled himself forward across the floor.

Face down, eyes shut, Rick crawled, reaching for the table with the CPR dummy. He found the edge of the table blindly and pulled himself up, head shaking against the assault. His hands smacked the table, hit the soft skin of the dummy, then knocked against the digital clock. Both hands snapped to either side of it, and he yanked the twelve pm clock off the plate. Instantly, the flies’ buzzing stopped, and Rick opened his eyes to find their dead bodies peppering the floor around him and sticking to his clothes. There was also one that had died on its way past the dummy’s lips. Rick flicked it, then wiped at the mess from his own face, including pulling the fly out of his ear canal.

Holding onto the edge of the dummy’s table for support, Rick hopped closer on his good foot until he could stand upright. He tried to take some soothing deep breaths, hoping to will the ache of his sprained ankle back into ignored territory. He glared at the red twelve on the clock, where it now sat just beside the apparently wrong metal plate. But it wasn’t the clock at fault. He should have thought the puzzle through more.

He turned on his good foot, panting lightly as he looked about the room. It seemed some of the crane flies had opted out of attacking him in favor of flying around the anatomy model, for there were several of their dead bodies draped across it and sticking between the plastic organs within. This didn’t surprise Rick given the awful rot-like smell coming from there. And as Rick looked at it now, the anatomy model seemed almost like a corpse itself. Stinking organs on display, picked at by bugs. Even the less detailed CPR dummy looked closer to life in that moment.

“Ohhh,” Rick groaned. “You think you’re clever, don’t you, Morty? Ya got me real good there, you little turd. Nothing tells a person ‘please come save me’ like making a fool of ‘em and attacking them with bugs.”

Like the original Sphinx riddle, the passage of time was represented by the figures on the tables. Life, death, and decay. Or maybe it was death, decay, and complete decomposition. Whichever, Rick was confident to simply swap the two clocks he’d mixed up so that the result was that six am went to the CPR dummy, noon to the anatomical model, and six pm to the bones.

With a clack, the front of the block on which the Sphinx perched sprung open, revealing a hollow space within where a treasure sat. Rick limped softly across the room, to the Sphinx, and retrieved the strange treasure.

Large in his palm rested a wooden matryoshka doll. It rattled with a loose but heavy weight inside. Painted on the doll was a suit for the body and a smiling mouth and eyes made of three black crescents for the face. The hair, which looked like a bowl cut with how it was painted flat to the head, was either a gray or pale blue color, but it was hard to tell in this lighting.

Rick opened the matryoshka doll, finding inside not another doll, but instead a key. Lips twitched to a self-assured smile. It must have been the key to the padlock of the next door. Then the smile faltered, because he knew there was no telling what would be behind it, or the one after that. But he felt that he must be close to the final floor. He’d climbed so far already. Faced so much. And he’d seen Morty again. Sure, that was only on the TV, but it was something. He couldn’t be too far off. In his gut, Rick just knew it. So he pocketed the matryoshka doll and returned to the corridor. He tried the key on the padlock of the second metal door, unsurprised but delighted nonetheless to find it a proper fit. The padlock opened, and it and its joined key thudded to the floor.

With a turn of the freed handwheel, Rick pushed into a room bathed in gray, and the rapid beating sound he’d been hearing amplified tenfold. The source of the sound became obvious as Rick stepped into the room. On the wall across the way was a large, square window from which the gray light entered, and the glass shook with the weight of fat, heavy rain drops that beat against it like gelatinous bullets exploding on the pane. This downpour made it hard to make anything out past the glass from where Rick stood at the room’s entrance, but he became less interested in the window upon taking in other aspects of the room.

It was not much smaller than the science lab. Aside from the window taking up much of the far wall, other prominent features of the room included an office desk by the right wall, and a tall chair behind that. On the desk sat a leather desk pad, a small picture frame, and a boxy, cream-colored office phone. The chair behind the desk was a nice plush seat with aqua-green upholstery. But the real eye catcher was the thing hanging on the wall just above the chair: extending from a standard shield-shaped mount was a large, chestnut colored horse head. The largeness of the stuffed head meant that it hung well into the space above the desk. If Rick were to sit in the chair, he’d bump the horse upon standing, and while standing, he’d face the horse nearly eye to eye. What made the trophy horse even more of an oddity was how a whole half of its mouth was strapped into a leather muzzle.

When Rick finally released the metal door and stepped fully into the room, the door fell closed just as it had in the science lab, and now he could see the tall bookcase against the left wall. The whole room smelled musty and stagnant, but nothing evoked such a feeling of age and neglect as this bookcase. None of the titles or names on the books’ spines were legible, either being scratched or creased beyond recognition. There was a thick layer of dust on everything, and when Rick took a book off a shelf, it was almost with a snap of being unstuck. The pages of every book looked like they’d dried after sever water damage: bloated, wrinkled, and with smudged ink that made them entirely indecipherable.

It only took a quick perusing of three books for Rick to determine their worthlessness, and he put them back to focus his attention on the only bauble on the shelf. A snow globe. Or so he figured, since the globe part was entirely covered in a thick layer of dust. He lifted the hefty, baseball-sized orb and wiped the dust away with his shirt sleeve.

A family of snowmen stood in the globe: two parents and a small child, papa snowman wearing a top hat and drab scarf, mama wearing a pink and white knit hat, and the little daughter sporting brown pigtails. They all smiled happily with their carved mouths and carrot noses and coal eyes. Rick gave the globe a small shake, and what at one point would have been a swirl of glitter and fake snow was now a milky cloud of speckled goop. Floating along in the cloud was papa snowman’s head, which quickly sunk to the little daughter’s snow feet. And they all continued to smile.

The swirling goop started to make Rick feel dizzy, so he put the snow globe back on its shelf and turned his attention to the desk. Thunder crackled as he crossed the room, but he paid it little mind.

The phone on the desk didn’t work, and what Rick thought was a picture frame was actually a cracked, dirty mirror. The desk had drawers, but they were all empty. At some point during this inspection, Rick heard amidst the noise of the storm a new rhythmic beating, but he was having no luck in locating it.

Finally, he got to the horse head. And it would seem he was mistaken in thinking he’d be eye to eye with it. It had no eyes. It would seem the supposed taxidermist had made an oversight on giving the horse its sight, leaving only two leathery divots where the eyes had once been. He wasn’t above admitting the thing gave him the creeps, what with its missing eyes and BDSM-esque, strappy leather muzzle. Rick sardonically wondered if this muzzling was a result of the same negligence or lack of talent that costthe eyes, and that perhaps without it, the horse’s jaw would fall open. And if this room was anything like the one before, Rick would bet it was within this horse’s mouth that he’d find the next key. This hunch was doubled when he reached for the buckle of the muzzle only to find that it had a little padlock of its own, this one requiring a combination of four numbers.

There would be ten thousand possible combinations, and Rick wasn’t willing to take the time to try them all out, nor was he willing to take whatever possible punishment this room might dish out if he got the combo wrong. But how was he supposed to find the combination? And what was that beating sound? It was getting louder.

A flash of lightning flickered through the window, followed by a rumbling roll of thunder. Being closer to the window now meant that Rick could make out a little of what was past it, even with the heavy rainfall. He stepped closer, and as he did, that other beating that wasn’t the rain began to get louder. It was like a beating heart, getting louder and faster, beating beating beating, and by the time he was standing at the window, the sound seemed to fill the whole room. And now Rick was mesmerized, entranced by what he saw outside.

The sky outside was blotted out by dark, rolling clouds. A towering mountain range lined the horizon, appearing purple in the shadow of the rainstorm. Closer than that was the grassy field he could step out on if not for the glass, surrounded on all sides by a short barbed wire fence. Standing throughout the field, grazing tranquilly as if unaware of the storm they stood in, were four large, chestnut horses.

Rick felt that the view held a sort of somber majesty, and he longed for it. He reached for it, and the _beat beat beat_ grew louder and faster still until his head throbbed with it. _Beatbeatbeatbeat_. Rick’s fingers touched the cold window pane.

There was a bright flash of lightning, and Rick slammed his eyes shut against it. Instant was the horrible crashing boom of thunder. Something cracked. Then, there was total silence. He opened his eyes. The storm had ceased, though the thick clouds still lingered in the sky. The beating heart had also gone. As for the horses, they all lay on their sides in the grass, legs straight out, thin ribbons of smoke rising from each one.

In the glass of the window, running down from where Rick’s index finger rested, was a long crack, and blood from his fingertip trickled along it.

Rick pulled his hand away and put his stinging finger on his lips. He felt how his own heart had begun beating heavily, and he took some steady breaths to try to calm it. It was then when he noticed the window sill, and how it was wet all across where it met with the glass. Removing his finger from his mouth, Rick pressed against the bottom of the window, and sure enough the window swung outward with a creak, the upper portion coming into the room so that when fully open, the glass hung parallel with the floor.

Cool air blew pleasantly into the room, and Rick breathed in the invigorating petrichor. Then, throwing over one leg at a time, he squeezed under the window pane and slipped outside.

Outside. Just what did that mean here? As Rick stepped across the field, the wet grass squished under his shoes. When he looked back at the building, what he saw was a squat cement shack. It was the sort of sight that didn’t add up, and that earlier in the night would have filled him with frustration. Now he barely cared. He kept his attention off the smoking horses, more interested in seeing what lay beyond the fence. It wasn’t until he stepped up to the fence when he realized that going beyond would be an impossibility. The barbed wire would be easy enough to slip under or carefully step over, as the top line of it only came to crotch level. But Rick had been deceived by the stretch of grass that rolled on toward the mountains, for he now saw that the perimeter of the field just past the fence was surrounded by a large moat, deep and wide and empty. It was as if the field had been broken off from the rest of the land, and there was no way Rick could cross.

 

Now Rick almost regretted how he’d judged the eyeless horse head. The almond eye starring into oblivion before him now was far creepier. Not that he wasn’t used to dead-eyed stares, but being accustomed to something didn’t always mean it lost its unsettling nature. But Rick wasn’t too interested in this dead horse’s face. Not when it was still smoking from a very precise point on its haunch. It seemed the lightning strike had branded the horses. In this one’s case, it was with a symbol that Rick at first thought to be a backwards “P” but that he realized upon looking at the brands of the remaining three horses, was probably meant to be a nine. The other three were branded with an eight, a one, and a three respectively.

It was clear to Rick what these numbers were. They were the combination for the lock on the trophy’s muzzle. And he had a good feeling he knew what order they were meant to go in. If there were some other clue out here meant to help him unscramble the combo, he didn’t need it. He’d always been good with remembering dates. It was never even that he particularly wanted to keep up with them. In fact, there were too many times he wished he could stop his brain from cataloging the years passing him by. At times, it was almost a curse that numbers ingrained themselves in his brain so precisely. In this situation, the very theme of the room made the number order especially obvious, and so he trekked back across the field to the cement shack, squeezed his way through the window, and set to inputting the combination into the muzzle’s little lock.

1983\. It was Beth’s birth year. The lock opened, and Rick pulled the snug leather from the horse’s face. He dropped the muzzle onto the desk and was just about to inspect the horse’s mouth when the whole lower jaw not only fell open, but fell off. Rick would have felt smug about suspecting this if it hadn’t startled him so badly. The rotted horse jaw hit the back of the aqua-green chair and landed on the seat cushion teeth down. At the same time, something that had been held within the mouth bounced off the chair, hit the top of the desk, and scattered across the floor in three pieces.

It was another matryoshka doll that had been holding a key. Rick first picked up the key, then the two doll parts. This one was smaller than the first, about the size of a chicken egg, and a split in the wood now ran up the side of its top section, making it fit loosely on its bottom. This doll had the same smiling face as the first, albeit with a lipsticked mouth, and the hair was painted long and blonde. A red dress decorated the body. Rick pulled the first matryoshka doll from his pocket and opened it up to place the lady doll inside, then he put the pair in his pocket.

New key gripped firmly in his hand, Rick gave the room another once-over. To the window, he gave a longing look. It had been nice to be somewhere that felt like outside. He’d have to appreciate his next outing when he got himself and Morty out of here. And with that thought, that he _would_ be getting them both out of here soon, he returned to the metal door. As he pulled it open, his eyes landed on that old snow globe. The goop had settled, the scenario frozen in time once more. To keep from becoming frozen as well, Rick pulled the door open enough to block his view of the globe, then stepped on out.

*~*~*

Morty scooted his foot along the top of the narrow wall, unwilling to take more than the tiniest of steps as he neared the platform that hung between the two hibernating demons. With his flashlight, he carefully inspected the path just in front of himself before moving his foot into place. This cautious method had already garnered a few groans from Rick, and he continued making sounds of annoyance until finally Morty stepped carefully onto the platform. It was wider than the wall but not enough to be comforting, and Morty shuffled sideways along it until he came face to face with the demon Rick wanted.

This doberman-esque face sent shivers up Morty’s spine, and knowing he had another one just behind him made every sensation at his back take on the image of the creature breathing down it. His hands shivered as he raised the block of C4 and extended it toward the demon’s snout. At the same time, his eyes began to adjust to the darkened figure, and he saw beyond the snout a large and lidded eye that covered much of the forehead.

The closed eye curved like a wide “U” and reminded Morty almost immediately of the carvings they’d past in the tunnel. A wide “U” followed by a spiked ball. Then a long line leading to a cat-like eye. The spiked ball also kind of looked like a sun to Morty, and this gave him an idea. Lowering the C4 to his side, Morty gripped his flashlight. Slowly, he raised the beam. In truth, he doubted this would work, but still he ran the beam over the demon’s stony face, across its pointed nose, to where he rested it in the center of its large, sleeping eye.

“What are you doing?” Rick called up to him, and Morty felt foolish for his actions. The flashlight beam, after all, was only a small circle of light on a giant eye.

Then, the room began to rumble, and Morty dropped to a knee on the platform, crushing the C4 and flashlight against the sides to hold on. There was a motion behind the closed eye, and Morty quickly lifted the flashlight again to watch.

The eye opened, yellow and cat-like, slit pupil pulling thin at the light. The demon shivered, and the once gray surface bloomed into sleek, black fur. As if in his mind, Morty heard the voice of a woman:

“Why have you awakened me, child? For what favor have you come to Ba’dendti?”

The voice was silky and warm, and Morty felt his nerves calm. It had asked him a question, but all he could manage in response was a weak “I… I don’t--”

There was a loud zapping sound, and the demon was engulfed in an electric blue light. The doberman mouth stretched open, and from it came a monstrous cry.

“Way to go, Morty!” Rick yelled, and Morty watched, speechless as the demon seemed to disintegrate in the beam being emitted by Rick’s metal pyramid. When the light disappeared, Morty was left panting where he crouched on the platform.

Then, a burst of hot, rumbling air sent his shirt flapping against his back, and with heart pounding, Morty turned, wide-eyed, to look behind. The other demon had awakened now, its own doberman face featuring two eyes in the expected spots, both as magnificent and piercing as the other’s. It opened its maw and roared.

“Augh, Morty!” Rick called. “What did you do?”

The demon’s voice boomed in Morty’s mind, and Rick must have heard this one as well because he was covering his ears and shaking his head.

“One does not break the twin bond and suffer no consequence!”

Unlike the first demon’s, this voice was masculine, and due to its rage lacked any calming quality. The demon beat his wings, breaking away the remaining stone texture from his surface and threatening to knock Morty off the platform.

“Morty, get outta there!”

Morty turned, starting to crawl for the wall when a strong beat of the demon’s wings sent him off the side of the platform. He fell with a cry that got knocked out of him when he crashed into Rick’s open arms, sending them both to the ground. This time it was Morty pulling Rick to his feet, and all the while the demon cried and beat his wings.

“What did you do to her?” Morty asked.

“Her?”

The demon struck the viewing wall with his ape arm, shattering a good half of it. Rick and Morty dove out of the way of the falling platform, and with the wall destroyed, they could see the opening of a tunnel beyond it. The demon, forced to crouch in the chamber, pounced at the duo, but Rick was already yanking Morty out of the way and toward the tunnel.

The pair ran down the new tunnel. Behind them, Morty heard the demon crashing into the rubble in his chamber, followed by a continuous rhythmic beating that was its giant hands and feet striking the ground as it galloped after them. They took turns blindly, booking it down halls long and short, sometimes steep, sometimes narrow, but never without the demon far behind.

“Rick! A way out!” Morty shouted, turning them to a path with a light at the end.

“Go!” Rick replied, and as they ran down it he asked, “Do you still have the C4?”

“What?” Morty asked before his brain caught up with him and he realized that, yes, he’d never stopped gripping the explosive.

“The C4, Morty! Do you have it?”

“Yeah! Yes!”

“Drop it!”

Morty did as he was told, and a moment later they were dashing out the tunnel entrance. Once again in the outer cave system, Rick halted, back to the opening in the mountainside they’d apparently made their way out of. He was holding the detonator up by his shoulder, button mashed under his thumb. Maybe Rick was too cool to look at explosions, but Morty wasn’t. He watched with mouth agape, hands on his knees and panting as the blast sent a cloud of shattered stone and clay out of the tunnel.

“Look at that,” Rick said when the blast died down. “Another adventure perfectly tied up in a pretty bow, huh Morty?”

Morty didn’t need to say anything. A cacophony of demonic screams and growls clued Rick to the danger they found themselves in. Flying in the air, clinging to the sides of the mountain, and lurching about on the land, all around them were otherworldly beasts of nightmarish design. Then, high up, something blasted out of the mountainside, raining rock down on the duo. The roar that followed was the roar of the doberman-head. His leathery wings stretched, then folded in as he dove like a bullet for Rick and Morty.

With demons all around, they ran for the only opening in the crowd they could see: where the ground extended out, narrowing over a sea of churning, crashing lava.

*~*~*

“So here we are now,” Rick said to himself, standing before the third and final metal door. He held the heavy padlock in one hand and turned the key about in the other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> RE: Beth's birth year. In canon, Beth is (or will soon be) 34 years old. I assume that Rick and Morty uses a typical cartoon/comic sliding timeline. That being the case, while I considered counting back from 2013 (RaM's release), I ultimately decided on going with the current year of posting this chapter, 2017. As such, I hope you can accept this tentative birth year the same as you would the "2015" that Rick writes on the Jerryboree form in "Mortynight Run".
> 
> And as always, thank you for reading!  
> hmu: [triplex-tyrant.tumblr.com](triplex-tyrant.tumblr.com)


	8. Transmogrification

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While reading the first of this chapter, you may find it mood-setting to listen to [this music box version of “For the Damaged Coda”](http://triplex-tyrant.tumblr.com/post/160880759790/kenjimobile-for-the-damaged-coda-by-blonde). It can also be found [here on Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqDRzI0AvcM).
> 
> Previously: We continued the flashback of the adventure leading to the start of chapter 1. Then, Rick plugged his flash drive into the goat and watched a video where Morty explained how the demon, Ba’dendti, gets inside minds. Rick made his way to a wall with three submarine doors. Through the first, he solved the Sphinx puzzle, receiving a matryoshka doll that held the key to the second door. Through the second door, he found an office with a window leading to a field outside. After reading combination numbers off of the horses outside, he received the second matryoshka doll, with a key leading to the third door.

“I don’t want to live like this,” Morty said. He floated in a black void, but warmth surrounded him like angelic wings. “Sometimes, I don’t want to live at all.”

 

*~*~*

 

Standing before the last of the three doors, Rick joined the padlock with its key, unlocking it and dropping it to the floor below. He untangled the cable from the door, and, with more effort than required by the first two, rotated the handwheel. It squealed, and when the door opened, it was to a stone stairwell of nine steps that Rick would have run up had he been physically capable of doing so. After such an arduous and lengthy ascent, he understood why the map depicted this third floor as being taller than the rest. Since he’d last seen the map, it had been ladder after room after ladder after room. And now, he took to the stairs with certainty.

He was close. He could feel it.

He reached the final step and threw his weight into the dark doorway at the top, but to his surprise, he felt no door, instead tearing through a silky, web-like film that clung to him like thin plastic that blocked his sight and cut off his oxygen. In panic, Rick swiped at his face, clawing at the sensation as he stumbled to his knees. Then, in the next moment, the film melted away like cotton candy touched to saliva, leaving his face and hands sticky but otherwise proving to be completely harmless. Rick drew in a heavy breath and stared down at his grimy self.

“Get it together, Rick,” he said quietly, getting to his feet. “Don’t give out yet, you old turd.”

Rick’s glow stick illuminated a rectangular room comprised of a dirt floor, smooth walls, and a low, rock ceiling. In a few places, stalactites grew from the ceiling in clusters, some nearly reaching the floor. They looked like the gnarly teeth of a deep sea fish, and from the tips of those teeth, little drops of water fell into muddy puddles beneath each cluster, echoing little _plip plip_ s. Four of these puddles were especially large, surrounded by another source of light that Rick had mistaken for flames. Their orange-yellow glow reflected in the puddles, rippling like true candlelight, but the sources were stationary, and as Rick came nearer, he saw that they were actually mushrooms.

It was only after making his way around the stalactites to the middle of the room that he could see the new doorways, one carved into each wall, and he groaned freely in utter annoyance. “No map, huh?” he scratched the back of his head. “Guess I’m still workin’ my way up. What about a sign on where to go?” He looked about. “No?”

He crouched by one of the larger mushrooms and tapped its top. It jiggled and, despite its fire-like appearance, felt cold. The color was unusual for bio-luminescence. The shape, too. The mushrooms’ caps were wide, their stems short and thick. Not quite the bulb-headed, thin stemmed fungus that would usually give off this sort of light. Or visuals for that matter, but Rick had been here too long now, and had taken too much damage, to think that any of this could be a hallucination. But at least for now, things were quiet. Rick lowered himself against the cries of his joints and muscles, sitting cross-legged by the flickering puddle, and with the glow of the mushrooms and the echoes of dripping water all around him, Rick massaged his sore muscles.

Before standing, he grabbed one of the fire mushrooms and broke it at the stem, but the light quickly died, leaving only a gray, rubbery shroom in his hand. He gave it a sniff, smelling only dirt, and since he wasn’t about to eat a fungus growing in a demon’s domain, he tossed it into the mud puddle.

Now he walked about the room, weaving around the puddles, mushrooms, and stalactites to peer into each of the new doorways, finding each leading to a short, dark hall. The floor by one doorway bore dozens of little, thumb-sized holes, and as Rick neared them, a queasiness came to him. He stopped before them, held his glow stick out, and saw that even the walls of the hall beyond were plagued by holes. They made the hall look disease-ridden, bored into until the stone became as thin as a wasp’s nest, and preferring not to walk on them, Rick turned away and chose another doorway.

The short hall he chose led to a room much like the first in design, though more square, and as Rick ambled about, the orange light of the mushrooms cast his shadow onto the walls and stalactites. _Plip_ _plip_ _._ _P_ _lip._ The droplets punctuated the eerie silence. The room contained another three doorways, and Rick didn’t trust any of them. The last thing he needed now was freedom of choice, and choosing doorways at random like he was would surely get him walking in circles if he wasn’t careful. No, if he had to guess at random, he would do it smartly, so he drew his kitchen knife from his back pocket and, at the entrance, carved a sharp R. Then he chose his next doorway. The next room proved to be more of the same, different only in that it only held two doorways. One was surrounded by a semicircle of those disgusting holes, so Rick’s path was made easier. He carved an R by the entrance before heading directly for the clear path. However, once he entered the hall, he found the walls and ceiling infested.

Infested, he thought, might have been the wrong word. After all, he could see nothing within the holes. No bugs eating away at the rock. But somehow, in Rick’s mind and in his crawling skin, the holes themselves were the infestation. Just as he was thinking this, however, a movement inside one of the holes caught his eye. A bobbing mass as wide around as the hole pushed near the surface before backing out of sight. Then it bobbed in another hole, lingering there for a short moment before being sucked away and deposited into yet another hole.

Rick watched the odd, little bobber dance between holes like a shy whack-a-mole, and he thought he heard a tinkle, like a small bell within the wall. Within the holes. It must have been the bobber. Part of his brain told him that the holes were parasitic, and if he touched them, he might become infected. But another part of his mind felt terribly compelled to sink his slender fingers in, stretching one open until he could curve his finger behind the bobber and beckon it to him. He lifted his hand, his heart beating hard as his fingertips came closer to those holes. He was sickened, and he was thrilled. The bell’s tiny sound played in his head. _Chiing._ Water dripped in the room behind him, but also from the holes now, being pushed out by the bobber and dribbling down the wall. _Chiing_. But the bell cradling his mind reduced all other sound to faint static, and he touched the rough surface of the holes. _Chiing chii--_

 _Ting-ting tiing_ _ting_ _. Ting-ting_ _tiing ting_ _._ Interrupting the bell, a new tune floated into the hall, and Rick quickly drew his hand back, wrapping his fingers in his other hand and rubbing away the sensation of the leaking hole wall. A shiver slid up his back like a wet tentacle at what he’d been about to do, and glad to get away from that hall, Rick followed this new, curious sound into the previous room.

 _Ting. Tiing. Ting. Tiing. Ting-ting-tiing._ The sound was like that of a music box, metal pins plucking a simple yet somber tune of repeated notes that dipped or rose minimally for some time before blossoming into a chilling melody. It was distant, but it was something to follow. Something to direct his path. So Rick followed that music to the room surrounded by the circle of holes, took a wide step over, and made his way into the new room. He carved his R at the entrance and followed the music to where it grew louder in another doorway. The song looped continuously, returning each time to the simple notes which played so long that Rick believed the rest of the song would fail to start up, only to be proven wrong time and again when that haunting climax arrived like a wave overtaking him. The next room was more of the same, and as he entered, the melody drifted further away. Fearing he might lose it, he made the choice to ditch marking his path and focus only on following the music.

The next room, also so alike the others except for the holes that marred the left-most wall, and the ceiling and floor where they touched, caused Rick to falter. Through the only doorway, the music box rang clear and close. But the fire-like mushrooms lit the marred wall, and Rick saw the bobber. Saw how it pushed water out of its hole before slipping away to do the same in another. It played its distinct chime that stirred a tingle in Rick’s brain and stoked a heat in his gut. He licked his dry lips.

“No,” he said, shaking his head, and leaving the bobber, he followed the music box into the next room.

This room was square and hole free, decorated only with mushrooms, puddles, and short stalactites, making a clear view to the only other doorway across the room. As clear as the music sounded now, Rick felt it must be in that next room, and so he hurriedly limped after it. It was when he reached the room’s center that a sudden tremor shook the ground beneath his feet. He stumbled only slightly but winced at the pain in his ankle nonetheless. Even as the ground rumbled, he turned his sights to that doorway, but he ceased all movement when, before his eyes, the far wall began to slide away.

He turned back and saw the doorway from which he’d entered sliding away as well. The trembling ground under his feet, he realized, was stretching out in both directions, pushing the mushrooms, puddles, and stalactites further away so that the place he stood became unnaturally clear. The music also continued to stretch away, becoming more and more distant until he almost couldn’t hear it. He wouldn’t allow it to escape him, however, and he took a decisive step toward the doorway.

 _Chiing_.

That bell, cradling his mind.

Rick turned his attention to the wall at his right, and he watched as that stretched-out section of too-smooth stone bubbled and broiled. Dozens of holes melted their way onto the wall’s surface. Soon, water began to run out in short, thick streams, and the thing that bobbed within – the thing that beckoned Rick closer to the anxiety-inducing holes – played its singular, dulcet sound at a steady rhythm. Before he knew it, Rick was standing before the wall. The wall, with its holes. The holes, pouring water pushed out by the bobber.

“Don’t cry,” Rick whispered. And he thought, why did I say that? The bobber lingered now in a single hole. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t.”

Rick sank his index finger into that hole. Tight, it sucked him in up to the knuckle. It felt like wet clay: soft, cold, and when his fingertip touched the bobber, dizzying. He pushed his middle finger in alongside the first, stretching the hole wider as he slid over the bobber and hooked his finger behind it. He pulled it out, water spilling from the hole as he did so, and with a slick pop, his fingers were free, the bobber secure in his palm. The hole quickly retracted to its original diameter, but then water, fat streams of it, began pouring from every hole until they became a waterfall, running out and muddying the floor. Rick stepped back. He could no longer see the wall behind the stream, and when the water finally died out, the wall behind had vanished as well. Instead, Rick found himself facing a new doorway. A short one, coming only to his chest.

His chest. He’d been holding his fist to it. He opened his hand now, and for the first time, he saw the bobber for what it was.

“A figurine.”

The thumb-sized head of the wooden figurine was the part he’d been seeing, but beneath that, the shoulders extended and sloped into the rounded, orange body. Swirled, brown paint colored the top of the head, and below that, crescent eyes and a dot mouth created the face of a sleeping toddler. When Rick turned the figurine, he felt a weight roll within and heard the ring of the bell. Carved along the curved base of the figurine was a slit with round points which, along with the loose weight, let the doll double as a bell. Rick wondered if metal linedthe inside, for the bell sounded high and light. He shook it by his ear a few times, impressed by how pleasant he found something so simple.

“Dumb little thing,” he said, looking into its face.

Unlike the other wooden dolls, this one didn’t open. But there was no denying it belonged to the set. Rick pulled the other matryoshka dolls from his pocket, carrying them across the stretched room to the side he’d entered from, and crouching by a cluster of glow-shrooms, he took the lady doll out of the man and placed the three on the floor. First was the man, his torso painted with a dull, purple suit, his hair a shiny blue-gray, his face pleasant, eyes closed and mouth smiling. Trios of thin lines fanned out from the outer edge of each eye to depict happy crow’s feet.

Next was the lady, her top section cracked on one side so that it rested loosely on its bottom. She wore a smiling face to match the man’s, though sans crow’s feet and with the addition of lipstick. Her blonde hair fell in waves down her back, and a red garment (that was either a dress or a blouse, but since the dolls didn’t have legs, it was up for interpretation) covered the remainder of the torso.

And last was the bell. The child, with its sleeping face, brown hair, and undefined, orange torso. And without a means to open the child, it stood to reason that this set of matryoshka dolls ended at the third generation, together at last.

“One big- err, one moderately sized, happy family,” Rick said before stacking the set, the bell doll secure within its lineage.

Even with the smallest closed inside, he could hear the bell’s chime as he rose to his feet. It made him want to keep the dolls in his hand, so with knife secure in his left hand, he approached the short door. It was here where the sound of the music box, nearly forgotten, made its way back to Rick’s ear, and he faced that faraway doorway. But when he turned toward it, the doll-bell chimed. He lifted the doll set in front of himself. Silence. Then he faced the short door, and the bell chimed again. It chimed a steady rhythm – _Chiing. . . Chiing._ . . _Chiing._

“Yeah, yeah,” Rick said, following the doll’s direction. “This is your door, is that it? Wanna- wanna make me crawl?”

The doll chimed. Rick crouched to look inside. The hall was long, short, narrow, and of course dark.

“So tell me. If I go this way, am I gonna find the top floor finally?” The man doll’s face stared back. “Or Morty?”

_Chiing._

Rick’s brow rose. “You better not be yankin’ me.”

With that, Rick bent, stepping into the hall, and head low, knife poised below his chin, he walked. The light of the mushrooms became more distant, and with no light at the end of the tunnel, Rick stepped into open space unexpectedly. Exiting the tunnel, he straightened his back before moving forward, only to stop when he nearly walked face-first into a chain-link fence. He found himself standing between a row of fencing and the wall that the tunnel led him through. Looking at what he now knew was a stone building, Rick noted how little the plain exterior matched the interior grotto.

He couldn’t see much. The sky above was pitch black like the most overcast of nights. The ground was pavement. Around him, he could make out the basic forms of tall buildings and chain-link fencing. Between these, walkways and alleys cut through in various places, twisting and winding away into the pseudo-night. He found no indication of preferable paths. Hell, he could hardly see the path he stood on. Lifting his glow stick on its ribbon, he found the light dying. He sighed.

“Better than nothing, but not by much. Guess it has been a few hours. Maybe even several hours, Christ.” He lifted the doll. “Alright, where to now?” Nothing. “Uh, hello. Where now? Lead me. Lead me to Morty.”

The only chime the doll gave came when Rick shook it, and even this was dull, sounding more of a clack than a chime. Rick scrubbed the back of his wrist against his aching forehead before stuffing the dolls into his pocket. “Back to the guess-work shit it is then,” he said, scraping his R by the tunnel before doing just that and trudging down the closest road.

Fencing lined the road to one side, and Rick slid his hand along the concrete buildings on the other. He kept expecting to run across a door or window, but with every turn he found only more buildings and fencing. And after some time of blindly navigating the roads, he turned down a path that led him to a stone building. One with a short tunnel entrance with an R scraped on the wall beside it.

“Son of a bitch,” Rick hissed, smacking a palm against the wall. “Don’t give me this going-in-circles bullshit. I can’t- can’t even see out here. I got this-” he stomped about, holding out his glow stick, “th-this dying light. A busted ankle. A puny, little knife for protection. No Morty. I-I’m not needed alive, right? You want me dead so bad, why don’t you come down here and kill me? I’m tired, weak, sober, can’t see shit. Can’t--”

He’d bent over while speaking, and now his glow illuminated a print on the pavement. A footprint. Rick fell silent, bending further to inspect the zig-zags and waves within the fluorescent print. Definitely the bottom of a tennis shoe.

Rick smacked at his glow stick, grabbing it and yanking the ribbon over his head. In his right hand, he held the stick out, scanning the pavement, and sure enough, beside and beyond the first footprint was another. And past that, yet another. Once again, the glow was acting like a black light. Rick wound the glow stick’s ribbon around his right wrist and followed the trail of white footprintsdown one alley after another. Heal-toe, heal-toe the prints went. Rick’s heart began to race, and he limped quickly. Being so absorbed, he nearly overlooked something odd that he passed.

Catching the oddity in the corner of his eye, Rick turned back, and he saw on the ground against one building a furry appendage. It was, he recognized after stepping closer and casting his glow on it, the leg of a goat. He looked at it for a bit, then pulled himself away, resuming his tracking. Heal-toe, heal-toe. He passed another goat leg. Then a whole lower half of a poor goat. He ignored this as well, deeming it unimportant if not a deliberate distraction from his tracking.

For the most part, Rick’s dwindling glow was the only light source on these roads, except for the rare place where a poll between buildings held a streetlight that shone a gentle yellow-orange over the ground. But these were very rare, as Rick had only passed two in the span of ten minutes. He didn’t mind their rarity, however, because even their limited brightness overpowered the footprints, and while it was harder to see in the dark, it was easier to follow the tracks.

Then, to Rick’s right, over the fence, came the howl of a wolf, and Rick froze.

He listened, but heard nothing. So he hurried on, but soon he began to hear a collection of nearby noises. The clicking of claws on pavement, low snarls, and uneven rustling came from beyond the chain-link fencing. Certain it would be a mistake to stop – certain it was the same large wolf who'd killed the goat on the catwalks – Rick decided to keep his pace up, stepping as lightly as possible.

The prints, too, became lighter. As Rick followed them between door-less, windowless buildings and other misplaced goat limbs, the pattern of heal-toe gradually became only toe. At least, Rick believed them to be the prints of somebody walking on tiptoes: small and rounded. The steps must have been so gentle that the print couldn’t fully form, for there appeared to be a split down the center of the shoe now. And surely with more time, he would have realized why the prints had taken on this strange shape,but realizations would have to wait because while Rick followed the trail into an alley where a flickering streetlight made the prints blink in and out of existence, he was halted by a snarling beast dropping from the top of a building.

The beast didn’t land. It toppled before him, but it quickly rose on gangly, shaking legs before barking so loud it hurt Rick’s ears and echoed all about.

The wolf.

Or at least _a_ wolf. It stood as tall as the wolf he’d encountered on the catwalks. Blood stained its mouth, froth rolling down its terrible teeth and over its jaw. But while it had appeared beautiful before, its silvery fur now lacked luster, laying flat or sticking out in some places, and missing altogether in others, leaving the beast splotchy with thin and bald spots. With so much less fur, it also appeared much scrawnier, its gut resting near its bumpy spine. Its tail looked almost like a rat’s. Beneath its large paws, the prints shuddered with the blinking of the streetlight, and when the light blinked on, it shimmered in the wolf’s gray eyes, glassy and pale, staring into Rick, detesting him. Meanwhile, Rick’s own fear of the mangy wolf mingled with disgust. For as magnificent and powerful as it had looked before, it looked sickly and pathetic now. Could this really be the same wolf?

“Guess it doesn’t really matter what wolf you are. You’re in my way.” Rick lifted his knife and took a step into the alley. The wolf took a shrinking step back, and Rick puffed out his chest. “That’s right, pup-pup.”

He took his next step on his bad leg, and when he limped forward, the wolf’s eyes jumped down to his ankle and back to his face. Then it wheezed, “Hee-hee-hee,” chest shuddering. It stepped, skinny legs swinging forward, hips swaying, and Rick backed away. For all its filth, it sauntered. It backed Rick out of the alley, then lowered its head near to the ground, its tail sticking straight back. It growled.

The wolf lunged.

Another bark exploded in Rick’s ear as he leapt out of the way. The wolf’s claws scraped the pavement when it landed, hitting the side of a building. Meanwhile, Rick slid on his side, smearing some of the footprints. He sat up, rubbing his shoulder. In the dark again, he almost didn’t see the wolf as it charged for him. He heard its clacking claws, however, and he swiped the knife blindly at the mass before him.

The wolf yelped, and to Rick’s surprise, it fell back, writhing against the road. Quickly, Rick got to his feet and shoved his right hand forward, casting the glow on the wolf. It was rubbing its wrists over its snout while blood ran from a gash across its nose.

Not wasting time, Rick rushed the wolf. A clean throat-slit would supply the rotten beast with a quick end. So he dropped to his knee and, clutching the knife in his left hand, hammered the blade down on the wolf.

The wolf snapped its head up, catching the blade between its teeth. Rick’s eyes widened. Those throat slices, he noted, were really disappointing him lately. He tried to jerk the knife back, but the wolf jerked as well, pulling Rick off balance and onto the animal. It rolled, sending Rick’s feet off the ground and throwing him over itself. The wolf released the knife, and Rick tumbled onto the pavement.

Rick took off for the lit alley where his trail continued. But the wolf leapt, and Rick saw its shadow overhead just before it landed in the intersection. It landed as gracelessly this time as it had before, its feet failing and sending it crashing to the ground before jumping back up to growl at Rick. Large ropes of sickly, green drool now dangled from its mouth, breaking and falling to the ground and leaving the fur on its jaw matted and stained.

The wolf barked, then lunged.

Rick ran. He ran his limping gallop back the way he came, planning to stay with the tracks. But the wolf chased, its growls and the cracking of its claws just behind. It chased him down one road after another, cutting Rick off and giving him no choice in direction. Rick didn’t know where his trail was now. He didn’t have the time to keep watch for it, and soon he knew he was running down roads he’d never been on, far away from his desired path.

“Fuck,” he gasped each time his foot hit the road and shocked his bad ankle. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. Oh, fuck me.” He squeezed his eyes shut. His head went light. He thought, I’m gonna pass out from the pain. I’m gonna die because of a goddamn sprained anklewhile trying to save my idiot grandson.

And then his glow hit a fence, twice his height and blocking the path before him. He knew the wolf could jump. But so could he, and he did. Shoving the knife handle between his teeth, he jumped with his good foot, hooking fingers around chain-link. And he climbed. He climbed like he climbed the wall on Glapflap’s third moon: blind, lugging the dead weight of an injured limb, and faster than he’d ever been able to recreate without the nauseating amount of adrenaline coursing through him.

Soon, he reached the top, but before he could slip his legs over, the whole thing shook, and he grabbed the top bar to keep from plummeting. The shadowy mass that was the wolf had struck the fence almost midway up and was now clinging to the swaying structure, but being unable to climb, it dropped to the ground again, where Rick couldn’t see it.

Rick threw one leg over the fence. Then the wolf struck again, nearly reaching the top, teeth mere inches from Rick’s foot. The fence wobbled, and Rick gripped the top bar so hard his thumbs bruised. The wolf chomped at him, and the fence gave under their combined weight. They were falling. Rick brought his leg back over and braced himself, pushing away from the fence just as it crashed against gravel.

He cursed as he crawled, the gravel crunching underneath as he got off the fence and to his feet. The wolf barked, and Rick kicked off, ready to dash across the gravel field only to be tripped by it. He hit the ground and quickly rolled onto his back, whipping his knife up but knowing it would do little good and that his fate was sealed the moment he fell.

But the wolf did not attack. It snapped at him from the toppled fence, snarling and barking and jerking its head and shoulders, but it came no closer. Rick stood, holding his bad foot off the ground, and extended his glow stick. The wolf’s back leg, he could now see, was twisted and tangled in a link. Rick looked at his knife, thinking how luck was on his side as he passed it from his left hand to his right. The wolf continued to yank at his tangled leg, eyes wide with fear as Rick stepped up, knife high and lit by the glow at his wrist.

He brought the blade down, driving it into a bald patch in the side of the wolf’s neck. Blood oozed around the blade, and the wolf cried. Then it snapped, and Rick yanked his hand back, knife left in its neck. The wolf, furious now, tossed itself from side to side, trying to tear its way out of the fence. Its claws clashed against the metal and gravel, and drool flung from its mouth this way and that. Rick’s eye twitched. He reached for his knife, wanting to end this. Then the metal tore.

Rick backpedaled. The wolf pulled its back leg free, took a step, and fell. Its foot was crooked, its ankle mangled. But it stood again, though low to the ground. And Rick, recognizing its lunging stance, had no choice but to run again. He ran, hobbling, not knowing where he was going. And the wolf chased, sporting its own limp, without which Rick was certain he’d be caught.

But he wasn’t out of the water yet.

It seemed no matter where Rick ran, no matter where he turned the chase, the gravel yard stayed underfoot, extending wide and far. He didn’t know where to go. Didn’t know what to do. But even as he sentenced himself to death, he ran, and eventually he could make out the towering shape of a wall before him.

“No!” he yelled, slamming palms into the concrete wall. All that, just to hit a dead end.

Or maybe not. The diminished light of the glow stick reflected off the frame of a fire escape. The ladder ran adjacent to the wall, ending just above Rick’s head, so he sprung off the ground and grabbed on. But the ladder wouldn’t come down, so kicking against the wall, he put all his strength into his upper body, pulling himself up with sore, shaky hands until he could stomp his foot securely onto the bottom rung.

He could make out a landing above, and he climbed fast with both hands and one foot. The wolf barked below. Then it jumped. Rick swung away from the wall as the wolf scratched at it, claws scraping all the way back down. He sighed and continued upward.

Pulling himself onto the landing, he spotted the flight of stairs on the other side. He almost went for it, but a loud bang rattled the fire escape. Rick jumped back. The wolf had leapt and caught itself on the edge of the landing, right in the midpoint of the path, head and front paws shoved through the bars that held the railing. It snapped, strong body jerking this way and that, shaking the fire escape as it attempted to pull itself up. Rick had to get by, but only inches separated the wolf’s snout and the wall. So Rick braced himself, stomping his good foot atop the wolf’s nose and getting a yelp out of it as he jumped over. His feet hit the other side of the landing solidly, and he stumbled, cringing as he fell into the stairs.

He rolled himself over, dismayed to find the wolf squeezing its way through the bars. “Come on,” he spat, picking himself up and climbing the steps.

The blessing was that the stairs were too narrow for the wolf to maneuver through quickly. Rick pulled himself up two steps at a time, hit the next landing, and took to the next flight, all the while with the barking of the wolf a constant that shook his nerves and the fire escape equally.

With the top of the building in view, Rick leapt to the final flight of stairs. But he was snagged. The wolf caught the end of his coat between its teeth. He could feel its growl traveling up the material and through his spine. He tried to pull away, one hand gripping the stair railing while the other yanked at his coat, but the railing gave out, and with a groaning creak, the metal pole snapped on one end and broke free of its screws on the other. Rick’s arm flew back, and the broken end of the pole plunged into the wolf’s eye.

“Arwoooo-oooo-oooo!” the wolf cried.

Rick watched, mouth agape, as blood spilled like tears around the pole. The wolf pulled back, and then so did Rick, dislodging the pole and leaving the wolf reeling. Rick looked at the pole, about a meter in length and broken on one end so that it came to a gnarly point. A point which was now slick with blood.

He broke away from the sight and flew up the stairs.

The rooftop was small and vacant, rimmed with a ledge only a few inches high. The shine of a streetlight below managed to illuminate one edge of the roof, and it was off that side that Rick spotted other rooftops. Unfortunately, they were too far and too low to jump to.

“ARF!”

Rick whipped up his pole. The wolf pulled itself out of the stairway, its chest heaving against raspy and rapid breaths. Its tongue lolled, dripping with sick. A trail of blood ran from its eye hole. The knife still stuck out from its neck. And it limped, its back ankle wrecked.

They faced each other. Tired. Sore. Filthy. Each holding one foot off the ground. The wolf leapt at Rick.

Trying to dodge, Rick took a bad step and toppled onto his back. At the same time, the wolf’s jump carried it overhead. Rick turned up the pointed end of the pole, its sharp edge cutting into the passing belly. Rick noted how soft it looked.

The wolf hit the rooftop behind his head and slid into the light. Rick dropped the pole, turned over, and got to his knees in time to see the wolf come to a stop. Frozen, the wolf stared vacantly into the distance as its intestines dropped to the ground.

Quickly, Rick stood, stepped up to the wolf, and grabbed the knife handle, freeing the blade from the wolf’s neck. Its eye flicked back to Rick. It looked, he thought, afraid. Then it swayed. It fell onto its side, its back hitting the ledge while its neck flopped, hanging off the side of the building. Rick watched with a stoney face as the wolf slipped over the ledge.

Then he saw the glint. The streetlight reflecting off of something within the gaping stomach wound. And just before the corpse toppled over, Rick caught it by the patchy fur and hauled it back onto the rooftop. He slipped the knife into his back pocket and placed his hands on the wolf’s belly, splaying open the gash. A trinket of twisting gold sat just inside the empty cavity, and with a grimace, Rick reached in, pulling out what he now saw as an image of a winding snake. While it was intricately detailed on one side, the back was smooth and flat as if it were meant to decorate a flat surface.

Rick looked at the wolf corpse again. The poor, mangy fucker. He marveled at how a beast that had impressed him so before could turn out so pitiful.

He tisked, and as he turned away, he said, “And that’s the waay the news goes.”

He walked to where he’d left his pole, but then he stopped and looked at the ornament in his hand. A snake. Rick was sure he’d seen something about a snake earlier tonight. And then he remembered, the words floating from his lips, “Do not combine the egg and snake lest thoughts of sin should incubate. Think no evil-”

His brow shot up, and he pulled the silver egg from his coat pocket. Like the snake, it had one flat side. And like the snake, he’d retrieved it from the wound of a fallen adversary. He remembered clearly the discomfort he’d felt for the toddling monster. With one ornament in each hand, he wondered what sin they supposedly held. He felt a thrill as he brought them closer to one another. It had been Morty, hadn’t it, who warned against this? Think no evil. Wasn’t it a little too late for Rick on that front? And if this nightmare was anything to go by, too late for Morty, too? Only centimeters apart, Rick’s hands were surprisingly steady, but his heart was not. Then, back to back, the egg and snake touched.

Nothing.

Rick rubbed the smooth surfaces together. Then he flipped the ornaments and rubbed their faces. He scowled. “Whatever,” he said, stuffing the egg and snake into his coat pocket before bending down and picking up his pole.

With nowhere else to go, Rick descended the fire escape, and rounding the building, he found himself off of the gravel lot and back on pavement under the streetlight. But he still didn’t know how to get back to the tracks, and when he walked out of the radius of the streetlight, he found that his glow stick had dimmed even further.

Rick walked the streets, taking turns at random while scanning the ground closely with his glow. Eventually, he did find the tracks again. Even more reassuring, they were the same tip-toe style he’d been following before the wolf found him, and he hoped this meant he was closer to their destination.

Against his own footfalls, Rick almost didn’t hear the other steps. But when his ears perked, he stopped to listen.

_Squick-squeak click, click. Squick-squeak click, click._

They were walking away. Rick jogged, following brightly fluorescing prints. Soon, he saw a figure ahead. It stepped with a _click, click_ , and the frame caging its body rolled after with a _squick-squeak_.

Rick shouted, “Morty!”

The figure stopped, and Rick shoved his right hand with the glow stick wound around it straight out as he ran.

“Morty! Morty! I’m here!”

Morty turned to Rick, the silhouette of his legs awkwardly bent. The curtain hanging from the frame still covered his face, and when Rick got near enough to shine his glow on him, he saw why Morty’s legs appeared so strange. And why the prints had taken on the odd shape. Rick came to an abrupt halt a few feet from Morty.

“What the hell?” Rick breathed.

His legs. They were goat legs. Small hooves clicked against the pavement on the ends of brown, furry appendages. The fur traveled up his legs and over his waist, disappearing under his shirt, but his arms at least appeared unaffected.

“Rick?” he said, his voice small and wavering.

Rick stepped closer. “Yeah, yeah. It’s me, Morty. It’s Rick.”

Morty took several steps backwards, and when Rick limped after, Morty continued moving away just quick enough to keep Rick from closing the distance.

“Why are you walking away?” Rick asked. “I’m-I’m-I’m here to rescue you!”

Morty’s voice came out smoothly now, as light and airy as it had been in the nightclub. “ _You’re_ going to rescue someone other than yourself?”

“You’re gonna criticizemy selfishness now? While you’re turning into a goat monster with what I assume is a demonic leach stuck to your head? I guess Ba’whatever didn’t consume the part of your mind that makes idiotic decisions yet.”

“Goodbye, Rick.”

Morty turned away, continuing his steady pace. Rick grunted, saying, “OK, all right. I’m sorry. Now will you let me take you out of here?”

Morty quickened his pace, and so did Rick. Morty said, “Do you know how?”

“Yeah, the fail-safe. It’s on the top floor, right?”

Morty stopped. And seeing this as an opportunity, Rick ran for him. Morty brought his hands up to his face behind the curtain. “N-no,” he said, the smoothness gone from his voice again. “That… Forget about that, Rick. You shouldn’t even be here. Please, just… Don’t go there. Th-the top floor, I mean.”

Rick reached for Morty, and Morty’s form flickered. Before Rick could touch him, Morty and his cage blinked away, instantly reappearing down the road, first a few feet, then several yards. Rick’s teeth clenched at the sight, and he ran, watching Morty continue to flicker like a corrupted image that might dissolve at any moment.

“What do you mean don’t go there?” Rick yelled. “I’ve spent the last six hours going there. I’m not going to _not_ go there.”

“J-j-j-just leave.” He wasn’t stuttering. He was glitching. “J-j-just leave-leave-leave.”

Rick ran. He didn’t want Morty to go away. He didn’t want Morty’s consciousness to get consumed. All because Morty thought he wasn’t allowed to have the thoughts he was having. Because Rick made him think that he should be able to control that. To be able to not think. And Morty didn’t have that ability.

He was blinking so rapidly now. Rick was closing in, but fearing he wouldn’t make it, he shouted, “I know why you’re here!”

Morty’s hands dropped to his sides. Rick reached for one. He wanted to take Morty’s hand in his own and yank him out of that damn curtain frame. But just as mere inches separated them, the ground rumbled, and from the pavement, a chain-link fence shot up, knocking Rick’s hand back and parting the two. Rick cursed and smacked at the fence.

“Morty!” The fence rattled in Rick’s hooked fingers. He stuck his foot in one of the links, preparing to climb when the ground gave another tremble, and a second fence shoved its way between Rick and the first, knocking him back further. He stumbled into another fence that sprouted behind him. Then to his left, yet another fence erupted. They were trapping him, pushing him away from Morty and toward a building. This building was the first he’d seen with a door, but he barely cared about a door when his grandson was flickering in and out of existence at the very edge of his glow stick’s range.

Another fence sprung up, sandwiching Rick between itself and the door. He looked away from Morty for a short moment in the chaos, and when he looked back, he was gone. “Noo!” Rick yelled. He pushed against the fence uselessly. With nowhere else to go, he reached behind himself for the doorknob, but the instant his fingers touched it, the door opened inward, and Rick fell in. Arms pinwheeling, he managed to catch his footing as the door slammed closed.

He turned to see red spotlights beaming down on a dirty room, and he pressed himself against the door when he saw the large hole that took up most of the floor. Only a narrow rim of flooring surrounded the hole by each wall, except the one Rick stood by, which had some extra width, presumably for the door. The red light failed to reach the depths that the hole traveled.

On the wall across the way was a series of horizontal, metal slats spanning from the floor to the ceiling from which cold air blew into the room, casting a wet chill over the area. Rick tapped his pole against the inside of the hole and listened to the echo traveling further and further away. Too far away. He tried not to think of how easily he could have plummeted had he not caught his footing.

He opened the door again, finding three layers of fencing blocking the doorway entirely. Going back, it appeared, wasn’t an option. And having no interest in diving down a mystery hole, Rick pressed himself against the cold wall and took careful side-steps around the room’s edge. He reached the vent on the other side, feeling its gentle, pulsing gusts against his body. He thought of soft ocean waves, smelling something fresh in the wet breeze.

He ran his hand down the slats, and to his surprise, they began to break. Under Rick’s touch, each piece snapped and fell to the floor, some bouncing off and falling down the hole. He was revealing a doorway to a room flooded with blue light. This light, it appeared, emanated from the floor and painted the walls. The floor itself looked like deep, blue water, and across the way, at the end of the room, was a clean, metal staircase that led to a wooden door with a simple brass knob. And on that door hung a framed map: a triangle separated into four sections. And this time, it was the top that was marked through in highlighter. The top floor.

Rick’s mouth fell open, and he stepped over the remaining slats and into the blue room.

Liquid splashed and rippled underfoot. Walking on the floor felt like walking on water, with his feet only sinking enough to submerge the soles of his shoes. Even his injured ankle seemed unharmed when supported by the gelatinous substance. He gripped his pole as he stepped closer and closer to that staircase, free hand rising to place a fist over his heart. After climbing so far, he was finally here.

And then he sank.

Submerged in the blue, he felt panic, but his limbs refused to move. He could only watch the shadow that was the bottom of the staircase as it shrank in his vision. Soon, it was the size of a cracker, and then it was the size of a pixel. And then it was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everybody reading and enjoying this fic. And especially to all of you who support me with kind comments and messages. It means so much to me! Even when I don't respond, trust me, I'm reading your words and feeling my heart catch fire.
> 
> my (nsfw) tumblr: http://triplex-tyrant.tumblr.com/
> 
> FAN ART!  
> Check out this amazing variation on "Curtain Morty": [still image](http://triplex-tyrant.tumblr.com/post/162026559780/mortemmessor-morty-smith-from-triplex-tyrant); [animated](http://triplex-tyrant.tumblr.com/post/162026819105/mortemmessor-i-cant-get-the-stupid-app-logo) by [MortemGrimalkinMessor](http://archiveofourown.org/users/MortemGrimalkinMessor/pseuds/MortemGrimalkinMessor).
> 
> Here's [another wonderful Curtain Morty](http://triplex-tyrant.tumblr.com/post/162516233600/here-they-are-sorry-if-they-arent-accurate-but) from this chapter by [tumblr user judge-fae](https://judge-fae.tumblr.com/)!


	9. Basement

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Previously: Rick entered the last of the three Matryoshka doors, entering a cave-like series of rooms and receiving the last of the matryoshka dolls: a child doll/bell. This led him to the cave exit, placing him in night-like streets. Here, he faced off with the wolf, killing it and receiving from it a statue of a snake. After a brief encounter with Morty, Rick found himself in a water-logged room containing the door to the final floor. And then he sank.

Sinking. Sinking. Sinking.

How long Rick had been sinking in the liquid blue, he had no idea. At first, the water had been cool against his sore and heated flesh, but some time ago, his hands and feet began to burn. Shortly after, his arms and legs followed suit. These parts grew numb, and now, he could feel none of them. The chill prickled his sides for a while as well, but like a horizon through a rain-spattered windshield, his perception of this had also waned dramatically.

The heat in his lungs remained, and with it, a desire to rise. An urge to swim. But the weight of his weary mind enveloped him in the pleasures that came with the ease of sinking.

For a time, Rick watched only that gentle blue, and it was with a dream-like awareness that he noticed the steely-gray thing appear below his feet. As he sank nearer, the enormity of what he was seeing became apparent. A building, he thought vaguely only to realize once he reached the structure what it truly was. An airplane, turned vertical and, unlike Rick, suspended. The countless windows passed before Rick like a row of black eyes, watching his helplessness the same as he watched its own. He sank by its tail, thick and long like the tail of a whale waiting to whip him.

The tail didn’t whip him, however, and the plane soon rose far above and out of his sight. Rick thought about how planes were so much larger than one typically imagined, then he wondered how it had come to be stuck like that. He wondered if he would get stuck too, or if he would sink all the way to the bottom. And either way, shouldn’t that scare him?

Wasn’t he doing something important?

Up from the depths came another vehicle, this one much more compact and personal. A scrap-metal saucer with a glass dome, engines made from trash cans and hand lamp flashlights bolted to the front, floated at an angle as Rick came down almost on top of it. His arms ached at every joint as he strained to reach for his ship, but he remained paralyzed, and just as his feet came close to touching down on the glass dome, he began to slip away, sliding over the form of his ship like a bug caught in a car’s windstream.

The dome began to pass by him, and he felt electricity in every tendon when he saw what occupied the cockpit. The airtight seal of the ship must have been compromised, for the ship was filled with water. Inside sat two bodies, Rick at the wheel and Morty in the passenger’s seat. Their hair bloomed upward, and Morty’s seatbelt held his body just off from his seat. Rick, on the other hand, had floated into an almost standing position. Both bodies’ arms stretched outward like those of zombies. After the initial panic at the start of his descent, Rick had felt no worry, but seeing the pair in the ship allowed his mind enough clarity for concern. Would he drown, too? He was holding his breath, and yet he felt no strain in his chest.

Their pale skin had become bloated, puffed up and wrinkled. Both sets of eyes remained wide and oddly alert in appearance aside from their unnaturally fixed positions, and Rick stared into the eyes of his dead self until he passed in front of the headlights. Blinded, he blinked rapidly, and by the time his sight recovered, his ship was floating up, up, and away into the blue. Rick didn’t mind though. Looking at that other Rick was unpleasant, and he was starting to hypothesize that the more he let himself sink, the further away from all the unpleasant stuff he would become.

Wasn’t he doing something important?

Cubes began to pass. Or rather, he began to sink past the cubes. They hung in the blue, a variety of colors. Black, red, green, orange. Some as big as a house, some as small as milk crates. Some near, some far. He wanted to reach out to them, and it was with some surprise that he found his numb right arm obeying his command to move. But it didn’t matter. Even the cube he came the closest to, a gray box big enough to fit a car, remained just out of reach of his extended hand.

His glow stick was still wound around his wrist, floating upright. At this point, the stick was a pale, lime color with no glow at all.

Below his feet, a white light appeared. Rick attempted to look down at this new glow, but instead, his downward turning head led his whole body to rotate until it faced the light’s source. It was a large display, wide around enough to encompass the span of Rick’s outstretched arms. Four concentric circles, each separated at different distances by a series of complex characters. At the center of the rings sat a six-pointed star, and in the center of the star, an inverted triangle. Within the triangle, a small vertical bar blinked like a digital pupil.

Had Rick not been familiar with this image, he might have figured it to be some sort of magic circle. But no, he knew this display. It was time to go home.

He reached for the circle, fingertips charged with the muscle-memory to input the fail-safe code. And yet, he couldn’t get it out of his head. Wasn’t he doing something important?

Suddenly, a golden light fell upon his outstretched arm, and craning his head back, he saw above him a gold cube. Room-sized. Through it emerged a fair hand, its fingers elegant, wrist slender. It reached for Rick, and suddenly, Rick remembered what he’d been doing that was so important.

Bubbles spewed forth from between Rick’s clenched teeth as he forced his numb limbs to push through the water and bring him upright. The freezing water bit at every inch of his skin, and his muscles burned in protest of his attempts to swim. With the same hand he’d been about to input the code, he reached for the arm in the gold cube, but it was hopeless. Even as Rick kicked and paddled, he couldn’t close their distance to anything less than a meter. To make matters worse, his lungs had emptied, and his chest cramped as a result.

His eyes snapped to his other hand, where somehow his metal pole remained in his loose hold. Perfect. He let the pole slide until he held only the very end, then, kicking and paddling as close as he could manage, he shoved the gnarled end upward.

The arm reached deeper into the blue, and when the pole’s pointed tip pressed against its wrist, those fingers wrapped firmly around. Rick was lifted. Water rushing over him, he was hoisted out of the blue and into the gold cube.

The moment he hit air, Rick inhaled only to choke on the liquid rolling in his lungs. He released his hold on the pole while his upper body flopped onto a wooden platform, and he vomited up the rich blue water before reeling in a rattling, wheezing gasp of fresh air, followed by a coughing fit. His sopping arms splatted about on the wood as he hefted a leg up and rolled out of the water and onto his side.

Cheek pressed to the wet floor, Rick coughed and panted. His bleary eyes slowly adjusted to make out the rows of metal desk legs before them, leading to a beige, plaster wall on the far side.

“Better?” asked a sweet voice on the brink between girlish and womanly. Rick rolled onto his back to see the girl.

“Oh,” he said, his raspy voiced rather flat. He cleared his throat. “It’s you.”

Jessica held Rick’s pole in her hand. Her glossy, rounded nails, Rick could now see, were painted lavender. Her feathery red hair bounced atop her shoulders as she bent to prop the pole against one of the school desks, then she rose, stepped forward, and held a hand out for Rick.

“You sank a long way. It’s a good thing I saw you,” she said.

Ignoring her, Rick rolled onto his hands and knees, and though his limbs wobbled, he managed to get to his feet, patting himself to discover that his clothes had already dried. The sight off the edge of the floor was unique, as the water rippled only an inch below the ledge and stretched out several feet before hitting a wall of steady blue. Overhead, a ceiling of the suspended liquid connected to that of the room the two occupied. It was as though a cubed chunk had been cut out of the water to allow for the room and a bit extra.

He looked about the space, seeing the familiar desk setup and dated blackboard at the head of the room. The windows that lined the left wall glowed with the blue beyond them. The only discrepancies were the wooden floor and the missing back wall.  

“Mr. Goldenfold’s classroom, huh? Guess that explains why you’re here.” As he spoke, he unwound the depleted glow stick from his wrist and shoved it in a coat pocket. “Well, among other reasons.”

Across the blackboard, a message in chalk had been scrawled large and messy. It read: “VioLate ME.” Among other reasons, indeed. He limped by Jessica, would have shouldered her had she not stepped back, and snatched up his pole. He made his way to the door at the end of the right wall, but when he smacked his hand down on the handle, it refused to turn. On the handle, where a keyhole should have been, was a shallow diamond depression with a slightly deeper “x” within. An “x” he assumed, that meant “NO”. He scowled and gave the handle a few more useless shakes.

“It’s locked for you, too?” Jessica asked. “It looks like we’ve both been assigned to the basement.”

Rick froze. “Basement?” He whipped around and glared at the blue that had taken him here. “God damn it, I really did get flushed all the way down this toilet.” He turned back to the door and struck the handle with the end of his pole.

“I don’t think that’s going to help.”

Rick shoved a hand into his hair and tugged. “What the hell? I made it all that way, and for what? If that demon wants me dead so badly, why doesn’t she stop with the cat-and-mouse BS and just kill me already?”

“You really think it was Ba’dendti who sent you down here? Boy, all this time, I thought Morty’s grandpa was supposed to be a genius.”

For the second time since he’d entered this room, Rick looked at Jessica. “Wha-what the hell are you talking about? If it wasn’t the demon, who was it?”

“Duh! Morty sent you here. This is the basement. The place he put the things he wanted to keep safe from Ba’dendti.”

“Safe? I almost drowned.”

Jessica held her hand to her lips as she laughed, and Rick clenched his hand around the pole with a pressure equal to that with which his lower jaw clamped against the upper.

“Trust me,” she said, “you were more safe in that protective field, and in this room, than anywhere else in this wonky cage. I mean, you should know that. You designed the dang thing.”

“I didn’t design it like this. For your information, my cage design was a lot more sleek and efficient. You’re Morty’s idea of Jessica, so I’m just gonna assume he takes into account that you wouldn’t be familiar with my usual style. But trust me, it’s not any of this.”

“Oh Lord, Morty’s grandpa,” Jessica said, planting her hands on her hips and cocking them. “So defensive. I’m not talking about the cage, I’m talking about the field around your fail-safe. The stuff you came here through?”

Rick’s mouth fell open. He’d forgotten about the control display. With quick strides, he moved past Jessica and peered over the edge of the floor.

“It might not look the way you remember, but surely you noticed it functioned properly.” She watched the little turns of Rick’s head as he attempted to relocate the circular display through the deep blue. She sighed and clicked her tongue. “Try out the window, genius.”

Of the pair of windows lining the wall, neither looked out of place, making Jessica’s exasperation all the more annoying, but as he approached, he saw that just beyond the first window, floating static in the blue, was a small device no bigger than an mp3 player. Flat, rectangular, and with a narrow screen only large enough for two lines of text, it was just as Rick had designed it. Right now, the screen read, “display active. awaiting input,” and on the back of the device, a narrow beam of white light projected downward.

“No way,” Rick said as he pushed the window open and reached into the blue, where his arm became incredibly light. He took hold of the fail-safe, then pushed one of the few face buttons beside the screen. Two things happened. First, the white light blinked off. Then, the liquid blue fell, vanishing downward and causing Rick’s arm to drop. He quickly caught its weight, the fail-safe held firmly in his hand. The air out the window felt cold and stale. Without the blue, all that was left was a hollow space, dark but for the light of the room, and terribly musty. Looking up, he saw cubes of different colors hung in the air.

Rick pulled his arm back in, along with the fail-safe. Jessica stood at the edge of the floor, looking out the back of the room. He joined her. A dirt wall stood a few yards out, climbing into total darkness. It would be a deadly jump to the ground below. In the distance, he could make out crinkled, foil duct pipes running this way and that, and a far away humming of machinery belied the safety of the classroom, as well as its distinction from the rest of the cage.

Rick huffed the musty scent from his nose. “We really are in a basement.”

Jessica looked to Rick’s hand. “Are you gonna use it?”

“Gotta find Morty first.”

Jessica turned full-body to Rick, pure confusion painting her face. “Are you thick? I told you, this is the place Morty put the things he wanted to keep safe. There are other rooms in the basement, too; me and this classroom are just part of it. And the fail-safe is another part he wanted kept away from Ba’dendti. And now you’re here. He wants you to use it. Duh! He wants you to get out of here! So how do you use it?”

“Hold on. What makes you think Morty wants me to leave without him? Now that I have this thing, I need to get back to the top floor as fast as demonly fucking possible and get us both the hell out.”

“Rick. Before you got here, I couldn’t touch that thing. I couldn’t open the door or windows.” Jessica stepped up to the open window, crossing her arms on the ledge and leaning through. “You couldn’t open the door either. But you could get that thing. I think Morty’s point is pretty clear.”

Rick held the fail-safe up, the screen blank. He pressed one of the face buttons, and the screen’s backlight blinked on, followed by the words: “activate display?  >NO  YES”. If he were to select yes, the circular display would be projected again. With it, he could type the fail-safe code and leave the Hellscape at long last. Rick moved the cursor back and forth. Then he looked at Jessica.

“No. Why would Morty go through all the trouble of leading me, of helping me defend myself against those monsters and leaving me clues to solve his puzzles, if he just wanted me to leave him behind?”

Jessica turned her head just enough to peer back at Rick. The humor in her narrowed eyes matched the upward tug in the corner of her mouth. “Don’t tell me you’ve never had mixed feelings about whether or not you deserve to live.”

Rick didn’t answer, so she pulled back into the room and turned, almost rolled, around to face him, hands clinging to the window sill, the back of her head pressed against the upper window pane. She snorted. “Or did you actually think you were so uniquely complex, you were the only one who had thoughts like that?”

Rick’s brow knitted, then furrowed. “Oh, c-come on! It’s not that big a deal. So he has some dirty thoughts. Big whoop. If anything, going this dramatic over it only serves to prove what a little dummy he is.”

Jessica touched her chin thoughtfully and smiled. “So you _do_ know why he tried to contact Ba’dendti.”

“I’m not an idiot,” Rick said before finally selecting “NO,” and the screen showed, “Goodbye,” before shutting off. He stuffed the fail-safe into his pants pocket, then limped his way to the door. He grabbed the door handle and gave it a hearty shake.

Jessica gasped, but it was to no avail. The door remained locked. With a pout, she said, “Further proof you’re not meant to leave. Did you also think it might unlock now that you have the fail-safe? Guess it’s not a puzzle. Just a clear sign that reads,” she punctuated the next words with her hand in the air, “End of the line.” She stepped away from the window and slipped into one of the back desks, crossing her legs and propping her elbow on the desktop, hand on her cheek. “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”

“Well here’s some news for you. I don’t really care what signs Morty’s giving me. If they have to do with me leaving this cage alone, he’s underestimated how much I hate wasting my time. I didn’t spend hours traversing a demon-corrupted labyrinth, studying its ins and outs, just to go, ‘Oh well, fuck it. Guess I’ll just go home.’”

Rick looked about the room. At the writing on the board. “What about the board?” he said. “That could be a clue. Writing usually seems to mean something here.”

Jessica shrugged. “It’s blank. I’m telling you, he wants you to save yourself. It’s kinda sweet, really.” The board wasn’t blank. The words “VioLate ME” were impossible to miss. But there was no point in correcting her. She went on. “Sounds like you’ve gotten pretty good at figuring out Morty’s little clues. Talk to me, Rick. Just what do you think you know?”

Rick moved to the desk in front of Jessica’s and grabbed the back of the seat. The legs scraped against the wooden floor as he turned the desk sideways, then he sat, back against the arm, to face her. He placed his pole on the floor between their feet.

“I think I know that the demon’s infecting Morty.”

“A better word would be absorbing,” Jessica said.

“That’s what I thought at first, but I’ve seen him. He’s still around, but he’s changing. There’s this,” Rick moved his hands around his head, “cage curtain thing. I saw it on him when I first got in here. That was on the first floor. By the time I saw him on the third floor, he had goat legs, too. I don’t know how much you know about demonic iconography, but nothing says demon like goat legs.”

Jessica pshawed and put her hand to her gently shaking head.

Rick scowled. “What then? So his consciousness is being absorbed. That changes nothing. If anything, it means my original plan is still in play. I already knew there was a time limit.”

“Not to make this a semantics issue, but I believe it might be more accurate to say what you originally thought was that Morty’s consciousness was being eaten by Ba’dendti. But what if, instead of absorbed, I said that Morty and Ba’dendti were becoming one?

Rick’s fists balled where they sat on his thighs. Something swam in his intestines. He didn’t want to believe Jessica, but certain ends were tying together. “I thought it was weird that she could alter the cage. That’s Morty’s use, isn’t it? She’s not eating his mind, she’s using it as a weapon.” He swallowed against something dry rising from his guts. “That’s a low fuckin’ blow. She’s got a hostage, a human shield, and a weapon all in one. All because she’s pissed at me for locking her up.”

“So it would seem.”

“So what? Wuh-what part of that makes my goal any different?”

“Once Ba’dendti finishes absorbing Morty’s consciousness, she’ll be able to go anywhere, even the basement.”

“Sucks for you.”

“And you. You’re stuck here, too. Well, almost.” She pointed toward Rick’s pants pocket.

Rick crossed his arms and legs. “I’m not leaving without Morty.”

Jessica sighed. “You’re letting Morty’s sacrifice go to waste.”

“It’s not a sacrifice! He’s the whole reason everything got this screwed up to begin with!” Rick leaned back in his seat and wiped at his mouth. “Why didn’t I just tell him when I saw him? Why couldn’t I just say that it was OK? He’s just confused. I get it. It wasn’t that hard to figure out. Everything I’ve seen in here has just been Morty’s shame made physical, all with a liberal coating of demonic paint.”

“Aww. You know your grandson.”

“I know biology. Going through puberty, you get exposed to something weird and the wires get a little criss-crossed. He popped too many boners around an old guy, and now his brain says, ‘causation’ when it should be saying, ‘coincidence’ or at the very least, ‘bad timing’.”

Jessica hummed a little laugh. “I just love how you keep an amount of emotional distance toward everything you’ve seen. Keeps it clinical. Ethical. Got something you wanna get off your chest, Rick? I’m a real good listener.”

Rick sneered. “I’m good, thanks.”

“I am impressed though. You managed to figure out a lot. Let me tell you what you’re missing. Ba’dendti’s union with Morty means more than just her getting to use his mind. He also gets a say in what images get projected. A small say, but a say nonetheless. And the frustrating thing, for Ba’dendti, is that she’s blind to some of what Morty alters. Sure, she can manifest his mental monsters into real monsters, but Morty can leave you clues that Ba’dendti can’t decipher.”

“OK, I get that. But why the four floors? Why not face me directly in the original space of the cage?”

“Ugh, I know.” Jessica yawned, stretching her mouth open and giving her chin a little wag before closing. “That’s actually another of Morty’s contributions. When he realized Ba’dendti’s plans, he began stretching the cage. Ba’dendti continued to fill the growing space up with monsters and traps, and Morty kept putting down paths for you to evade them.”

“And he locked up the stuff he didn’t want eaten or absorbed down here. Rooms of memories he didn’t want eaten. The fail-safe. And you.” Rick noticed that he’d let his eye contact with Jessica fall, so he returned his gaze to hers. He’d be lying to say those eyes weren’t beautiful. “And am I right that he and good ol’ demon Bad Ending are locked in the tip of the pyramid?”

She winked. “So what’s the next move? I hate to sound like a broken record, but it’s really been looking like your only choice is to use the fail-safe and save yourself. Or wait it out with me here until we die.”

Rick racked his brains to no avail. He felt so useless and so small, letting his own creation become his torment. What a regular Victor Frankenstein he was proving himself to be. But why did Morty have to be the monster’s victim?

“Even if I left, I can’t break the cage. There’s too much risk that I’d lose Morty’s consciousness completely.”

“Hmm. That is a dilemma.”

“And if I die in here, she’ll be able to get the fail-safe code from my mind anyhow.”

Jessica’s desk creaked as she sat upright, her eyes widening and mouth falling open. A crease appeared between her brows. “How do you know that?”

“The whole ‘you’re not needed alive’ thing.”  Rick twirled his hand. “I read it. Morty said it in his little video. Sounds ominous, but I get the idea. I can either give her a way out willingly, or she can kill me and take my consciousness literally from my cold, dead hands.”

Jessica scowled. “Little video?” she snapped. “What little video? What writing? Here in the basement?”

Rick cocked his head. In the back of his mind, an alarm was ringing. “Noo,” he said. “Not in the basement. The third floor.”

“That’s impossible!” Behind snarling lips, Jessica bared her teeth. Her prominent canines, which usually held a cute quality, now reminded Rick of his showdown with the wolf. “How could he…”

“Jeez, what’s got you in a tizzy? You’re upset because Morty never gave you full access to his shame parade? Probably because his vision of you is a dummy who can’t read his clues anyhow. You know, his vision of me is a hot genius. Not that it matters, but,” Rick chuckled.

Jessica folded her hands on her desk and smiled at Rick. A genuine, gentle smile that played like a record scratch to her previous demeanor. “Why don’t you tell me more about how good that makes you feel, Rick?”

“Hey now. Don’t get the wrong idea.”

“Would it help if I showed you first? I’m real good at listening, but I’m also super good at showing.” She nearly moaned the words, “Super. Good.”

Past the fan of her long, auburn lashes, her pupils flickered like television screens. In them, Rick saw soft, brown hair curled above an exposed neck, lightly tanned. Small fingers with knobby knuckles groped at him. As if against his ear, a voice undulated between high and low tones. The words were unintelligible, but impassioned, and they dripped like honey down his spine. He saw the shuffling of skin and sheets, and he felt electricity. He wanted to call for this person.

Rick remembered what Morty had said in his video: how Ba’dendti had shown Morty his own thoughts, and how they only came to life once he’d said what he’d seen.

Slamming his eyes shut, Rick shot up from his seat, his left foot landing atop his pole and sending him forward. Both hands slammed on Jessica’s desk, and when he opened his eyes, it was to glare. “You’re her!” he screamed, undeterred by his stumble and seething at the perpetrator he’d chatted with as freely as colleagues having coffee.

Jessica’s lips stretched into a wide smile, her eyes narrowing from coquettish to sinister. “I’m just a boyish, high school crush. No need to feel threatened.”

“Fuck that! You’re Ba’dendti, aren’t you?”

“Oh Rick, you really have a problem with showing off.” Jessica’s sweet voice morphed to something more husky, laced with a strange accent. “Doesn’t take much to get you spilling everything you know.”

Taking fistfuls of her shirt, Rick hauled Jessica up from her seat, knocking the whole desk forward when he dragged her out. She stood on tip-toes as Rick’s breath seethed through his teeth and into her face. “Give me my grandson, you piece of shit!”

Jessica cackled. “If you want him, come and get him. Oh wait, you already tried at that. And you failed. Do you want to know what he feels like, Rick? I’m holding him right now. He’s soft. And warm.” She threw her head back and laughed some more, only stopping once Rick wrapped his hand around the pale column of her stretched throat. Around her, his hand appeared huge and spider-like, and her laughter turned to a gurgle beneath it.

“Don’t fuck with me. How do I get out of here?”

At first, Ba’dendti’s voice only cracked and squeaked, but when Rick loosened his grip, she croaked out, “The fail-safe.”

Rick shook her. “Out of the _room_!”

Again, she said, “The fail-safe,” and she laughed. “That’s your only option.”

“Yeah, sure. So you can see the code, and when you and Morty are completely merged, you’ll be able to use it to escape yourself. I’m not giving you that option! Do you hear me?”

“Does it make you feel good to hurt me when I can’t fight back? I told you, I can’t hurt a thing down here. Tell me how you want to hurt me, Rick.” Then in Jessica’s voice, which spoke unrestrained by the strangling hands, she said, “Tell me how you want to hurt me.”

Rick wrapped a second hand around Ba’dendti’s throat and shook her viciously. “Fucking bitch!”

Jessica’s face turned a deep red, and purple began to tint the skin beneath her eyes. Still, Ba’dendti’s voice came, low and steady. “Once Morty and I are completely one, I’ll be able to touch whatever I please. I think I might touch you, Rick. Maybe I’ll touch your heart. Let it have its last beat in the hand which Morty and I share. Maybe I’ll touch your mind. When I get out of here, I’ll touch so many people. I’ll destroy the whole species of the being who thought he could contain Ba’dendti.

“You thought you could cage a being as powerful as me? I know you humans. I’ve dealt with you before. That boy’s mind, even it cages a demon more powerful than you. And your mind, Rick. I bet it cages a demon, too.”

The flesh of Jessica’s neck bulged between Rick’s fingers, and she began to choke and gurgle again. Her eyes bugged, her head flopping wildly as Rick shook her. But her damned face, it was still bright with laughter. Soon, her blood-shot left eye swelled to the size of a softball.

POP!

Air rushed out of Jessica’s exploded eye, and her body crumpled like a pool float. Rick was left huffing and puffing with his hands clenched around nothing more than flattened, Jessica-shaped plastic, her face expressionless aside from an “O” mouth. He released the crinkly doll, and it fell to the floor with a light splat.

Rick wiped the sweat and saliva from around his mouth. “You were right. That did feel good.”

He stepped away and sat back in his seat, clenching and unclenching his hands until the sensation of strangling subsided. He contemplated the real Jessica, and if he ought to somehow make it up to her for throttling her image. But ultimately, he decided against it. He knew himself well enough to know it wasn’t Jessica he’d so strongly wanted to hurt. Ba’dendti might have tried to make him feel that way, but no. While Jessica was decidedly not his favorite of Morty’s cohorts, he didn’t hate her. Hated that she took up so much of Morty’s attention and acted as an obstacle for getting Morty to go on adventures at times, sure. Hated the contrast in Morty’s demeanor when giving up his time for her as opposed to doing the same for him, most definitely. Loathed the sugary disposition Morty wore when jabbering on about how smart and talented and beautiful Jessica was to the point that it set his eye twitching and made his skull feel like it was filling with blood, of course. But Rick, though petty, wasn’t so petty to strangle someone over a little jealousy.

Not that he was jealous.

Rick turned in his desk and looked to the board. VioLate ME. She hadn’t been able to see that, but Rick was certain it held significance. He took up his pole from the floor before standing and making his way to the board. The smell of chalk was a welcome change from the basement dankness that had filled most of the room. Lightly, he touched his fingertips to the board, carefully tracing alongside the lettering. At the end of the bottom line in “E”, he wiped the chalk, and it properly transferred from the board to his fingertip. He rubbed the gritty substance between his fingers, then stuck his hand in his pants pocket, pulling out the two items it held: the fail-safe and the broken flash drive. He pocketed the fail-safe and ran his thumb over the drive stick.

If only he could listen to the video again. Maybe there would be new information in the parts of the audio that cut out. But the truth was simply that Rick wanted to hear Morty’s voice again. That whiney, brittle, cute puberty voice that could surprise him with its recent low dips and delight him with its familiar squeaks. He knew Morty felt his own voice to be annoying, but to Rick it played like a bell. And like Pavlov’s dog, he would fall a drooling slave to its tone if he wasn’t careful.

And there was a thought.

Rick stepped away from the board, running his hand slowly down the side of his face. He put the drive stick back in his pants pocket then reached into his coat and retrieved the matryoshka dolls, the chime of the bell at their center just audible. Popping the man and woman dolls open, he discarded them on a desk and held the child doll in his fingers. He shook it, and it rang clear.

“Did you know that round, ball-shaped bells are called crotals?” Morty had told him last December as he read an article on his phone about sleigh bells. “And they’re not actually bells. They’re technically rattles.”

“Morty, that’s such useless, trivial information, it doesn’t have an effect on anything,” he’d replied.

Rick slipped his thumbnail into the slit on the doll’s base.

VioLate ME.

Why did it have to sound so sleazy?

He pried his thumb back, but the wood held firm. Rick licked his lips and lifted the doll to his face, pressed the top of its head to the tip of his nose (it smelled like pine), then opened his mouth and placed the base of the doll between his teeth, tongue against its slit.

“Well, did you know,” Morty had continued, “the slits on the bottom of bells — o-of crotals — are called their throats?”

“If you want something interesting about bells, I could shoot you a portal to dimension 46’\ and capture a whole herd of cryptid elk whose antlers act as aeolian harps that make the best chimes you’ll ever hear. You know what an aeolian harp is, Morty? Y-you think you’re smart with your bells and crotals, but you don’t know what an aeolian harp is?”

Why had he been so bitter in response to Morty’s interest? He must have been in one of his moods. His face even burned with shame at the memory of it. No, he hadn’t known that an enclosed bell was called a crotal. He didn’t know about the throat. He disliked not knowing. But these were little things. Were they worth tearing the boy down over?

Rick bit down on the wooden doll, feeling its shape give between his molars. The wood cracked, the piece inside (he wondered if Morty knew the word for it) falling into his cheek, so he held his hand under his mouth and dropped the broken doll and bell piece into his palm. The base of the doll was well-shattered, and a crack ran up and across its face. As for the bell piece, it was a small, metal diamond with a raised “x” on one side.

Dropping the child doll on the desk with its family, Rick promptly limped for the door. For the handle, with its diamond and x depression which Rick filled, pushing the bell piece in with his thumb.

No click. No ding. But when he took hold of the handle and gave it a turn, the door opened and revealed an empty, unlit closet, though with no floor or ceiling. Like an elevator shaft. Definitely an elevator shaft, for a set of rumbling wheels drew close from above as the rickety box lowered in front of him. It’s tarnished scissor gate sprang open. A single caged light bulb on the elevator’s ceiling revealed the amber colored floor below, as well as the operating lever against the back wall. Rick stepped inside. The walls were an off-white and covered in black stains that had once been dripping.

The moment Rick took hold of the hefty lever, the gate rattled shut. He gave the lever a good shove, and it swung fully to the other side, setting the wheels turning and the elevator rising steadily. When he turned around, his sight fell on the matryoshka dolls where he’d left them on the desk. Wanting to keep them, he grabbed hold of the lever, but the thing refused to budge.

“Shit,” Rick said, then shrugged before slouching against the lever. It wasn’t like he had any use for the dolls now anyhow, he figured. He looked at the ceiling, feeling the box’s vibrations as they carried him to his next destination. With a hand against his pants pocket, he said, “Don’t worry, Morty. I’m coming.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you're continuing to enjoy the story. I sure am loving writing it. And thanks so much for all the nice and enthusiastic comments! It really warms my heart and makes me all the more eager to get this story out.
> 
> Please check out this AMAZING comic for this story by tumblr user [ghostygoo-girl](http://ghostygoo-girl.tumblr.com/):  
> [Pages 1-4](http://triplex-tyrant.tumblr.com/post/164043289135/ghostygoo-girl-pages-1-4-next-coming-soon-so)  
> [Pages 5-7](http://triplex-tyrant.tumblr.com/post/164177697270/ghostygoo-girl-beginning-pages-5-7-previous)
> 
> I'm eternally honored. And don't forget to check end notes of previous chapters for fan art you might have missed.


	10. Room of Rot and Roses

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Previously: Rick sank from the entrance of Floor 4 all the way down to the basement. Here, he met Jessica, who explained some details about what has been happening between Morty and Ba'dendti. Rick retrieved the fail-safe but is determined not to use it without Morty. After a confrontation with Ba'dendti herself, he now takes an elevator up. (Did you catch the subtle Gravity Falls reference last chapter?)

The elevator continued to carry Rick away from the basement, and yet the basement’s dankness lingered. For the past several minutes, he’d been leaning back against one of the elevator’s side walls, his arms crossed over his ribs and legs crossed at the ankles, while his pole stood propped at his side. The scissor gate at the front of the elevator separated the box from the wooden wall of the shaft just beyond, and the same dripped stains that marked the elevator walls also streaked the wooden wall. It reminded Rick of rot, but that didn’t stop him from leaning against it. Not with how tired he was. The vibrations of the dated mechanisms nearly lulled him, and for a moment, he did close his eyes.

A subtle floral fragrance crept to his nose, a welcome change from the basement odor, and he took it in with slow, deep breaths.

 _CHUNK_.

The lever on the back wall jumped backwards halfway on its post, and Rick lurched when the elevator slowed. With a squeal, the lever crawled further back until it returned to its starting position, causing the elevator to come to a complete stop at the first doorway it had encountered since leaving Goldenfold’s classroom. Past the scissor gate was a short hall, barely longer than the floor of the elevator, that led to a pink, velvety curtain with gold tassels nearly brushing the dirty floor.

The scissor gate sprang open.

“That didn’t feel like a long enough ride to put me back at the top,” Rick announced as though he expected a ghost operator to close the gate and turn the lever again until they reached his desired destination. When nothing happened, Rick grabbed the lever himself, pulled, even planted his good foot against the wall to give the thing all his weight. But it wouldn’t give. With a loud grunt, he hopped back down and released the lever. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

Snatching up his pole, Rick exited the elevator. He scowled as he took a handful of the velvet curtain and gave it a hard yank to the side. Through here, he saw, was the source of the flowery scent.

The room beyond the curtain housed a jungle. It was like a museum exhibit of familiar alien flora, the exotic plant life snaking along the ground and towering toward the high ceiling. A dirt path, lined on either side by river rocks, gave a sense of maintenance to the otherwise wild surroundings, beginning at the doorway and winding through the dimly lit jungle.

Rick breathed deep the room’s perfume as he entered, stepping along the dirt path.

“Room after room,” he grumbled, then rubbed the back of his neck and stretched his mouth open for a forceful yawn. “Just get me to another elevator.”

The path was more solid under his feet than he expected, causing his footfalls to echo. He recognized many of the plants as he passed them. Giant, purple flowers hung overhead, an off-planet variety of fly traps he and Morty had seen some weeks back. The pair had hotly debated what to call them, resulting in longer and longer descriptors along the lines of “Not-Venus-fly-traps-because-this-isn’t-Venus fly traps” and “Still-Venus-fly-traps-because-it’s-Venus-the-goddess-not-Venus-the-planet-and-if-it-were-Venus-the-planet-they’d-be-Venusian-fly-traps fly traps”. Morty had become so annoyed at Rick’s need to remind him they weren’t on Venus that he’d determined to give Rick the cold shoulder for the next hour. It had been one of those rare annoyances, more humorous than genuine, and thinking on it now made Rick wish these were the more common variety. In truth, usually when Morty got mad at him, it was not only genuine, but deserved as well.

He left the fly traps behind, ducking under large fans of leaves as he moved deeper into the room. He eyed a patch of familiar weeds that were reminiscent of Earth’s cattails, albeit more colorful. They were the same weeds he and Morty had seen while sloshing through an alien marsh. Morty had called them rainbow corn dogs.

Next, he passed a bed of flowers from an alternate version of Earth. Giant, leopard-spotted lilies. They’d set off Morty’s allergies and made hiding from the differently-evolved birds of prey much more difficult. Rick had taken the birds out easily enough, but this didn’t stop him from reprimanding Morty’s sneezes.

The path curved around a thick tangle of briars and led Rick deeper through the foliage until he could no longer look back at the curtain through which he’d entered. Here, in the darkest part of the jungle, he came to a stop. Because although the room had been dim from the start, it occurred to him only now why it wasn’t entirely dark. He’d forgotten his own loss of light until just now, spotting the source of the gentle glow about the room. Growing out of the ground, poking out from the dirt and between the greenery, and some even breaking through the rocks that lined the path, were those same orange glow-shrooms that had lit the grotto of Floor 3. Rick knelt to one, letting it cast its flame-like light onto his outstretched hand. He cupped his palm over the shroom’s wide cap, blotting out the glow aside from what seeped through his skin and colored the back of his hand blood-red. Somehow, he found comfort in these mushrooms. They were like an ally, illuminating his path through the hellish shadows.

The walkway led Rick back out of the thickest part of the jungle, bringing him near the side wall. Hanging jungle vines covered parts of the wall like drapes, and behind one such patch, a glimmer caught his attention. The bits of wall peeking through the jungle vines appeared especially sleek, almost vitreous, and he stepped off the path for a closer look.

He let his fingers play against the vines before pushing them to one side, revealing a tall window. “Interesting,” he mumbled, wary as he took another bundle of the vines in his other hand and pushed them to the other side so that he stood before the window with arms outstretched. Through the window, he looked down on a hallway lined with wooden doors. The carpet was cream with red-brown ornate designs. On the walls, blue diamonds decorated the aged, yellow paper.

Rick swallowed. He was looking down on the sleazy hotel hallway where his journey began. He stood above the hall’s ceiling, which from here he saw as only another pane of glass to look down through. It was as if he were behind the scenes, and he shivered at the thought that somebody had watched him from this very spot.

That first hallway, where Morty’s room was located, was easy to see from this vantage point. When Rick moved closer to the window, he could look down at the other hall where he’d first chased Morty. Together, the two halls formed an L, and although he could see through their ceilings as easily as glass, he couldn’t see into the rooms. A black, opaque material covered that space. Except for one room, which, with his forehead pressed to the window, sat at the very edge of what he could see. It was the broom closet. The blue room. Its red door lay inside, busted in two. And yet the ball sack monster who’d done the damage was nowhere to be found. Neither were the other two monsters he’d killed for that matter.

“Nothing worth looking at anyhow. I’m done with these rooms. I just need to get through here and back to the top.”

Rick dropped the vines, letting them cover the window once more as he turned away and returned to the path.

He continued on, winding through the museum of alien plant life. Deeper into an exhibit of memories: his and Morty’s otherworldly travels, bathed in the comfort of the orange glow-shrooms. Soon, the jungle gave way to something more forest-like, the thick canopy replaced by branches that reached across the open space like skeletal claws. The heavy vegetation that had been coloring the ground became more scarce in favor of loose dirt, twigs, and autumnal leaves. The earthy smell of moist dirt took the place of the floral scent of the jungle. The orange glow-shrooms continued to decorated the forest floor regularly, and soon the river rocks that lined the path were all that separated it from the rest of the ground, as its dirt also grew so soft that his footfalls were no longer audible. He could have forgotten he was indoors.

The path finally ceased its erratic winding and led Rick on a straight walk through the woods. He hoped he’d come to the exit soon.

“Don’t worry,” he said even as he stuffed his free hand into his pants pocket and tucked his elbows closer to his body. “These won’t be the last plants you get to see, Morty. We’re gonna get out of here, and I’m gonna show you so many new flowers and weeds you won’t even have room for ‘em all in your memory museum. So many adventures, Morty.”

It was that thought —  that fantasy of flying Morty to new fantastic worlds — that was interrupted by a familiar sound.

He’d heard it in the caves, that floating tune like one from a music box. It was like a lullaby, this melody whose subtle lilts teased the listener with its repetitive nature before finally growing more complex and beautiful. The song looped seamlessly, coming down from its climax and back to the simple notes like an afterglow. A mimicry of a refractory period that made listening in wait for the return of the musical peak all the more tantalizing. Hypnotic, even. And before he knew what he was doing, Rick stepped off the path, wandering after that music. His foot came down on one of the glow-shrooms, crushing its cap and breaking its stalk, its light snuffed out as he limped lightly into the woods.

The stupor in which he wandered the woods broke only once he came upon a wall. Not a wall of wood or block or metal, but of leaves and thorny vines. The woods had opened up at some point, and Rick found himself standing now before a rose bush hedge. The sturdy hedge-wall was speckled all the way up and across with the magenta flowers. Rick held one, stroking its satiny petal between his fingers.

He could hear the music beyond the wall. The source, he felt certain, was close. Perhaps just beyond the rose hedge wall. But the shrubbery was far too dense to push through, so he began to follow alongside it. When this only resulted in him turning a corner to an identical connected wall, he considered the possibility of trying to cut through with his knife. Luckily, he wouldn’t have to resort to something so tedious, for he came to an archway cut into the wall.

Glow-shrooms dotted the ground down the arched tunnel. The wall itself must have been rather thick, for the path stretched so far that it extended beyond Rick’s view. Whatever the walls were protecting, he’d have to enter to find out.

“Who cares what’s in there?” Rick asked himself. “What am I even doing here? I need to get back on the path, dammit. I need to get back to the top.”

The music echoed down the tunnel.

“It’s that song that’s screwing with me. I’m gonna find out what’s making that noise,” he took a step in. “And I’m gonna shut it up.”

Stepping into the tunnel through the rose hedge wall was like stepping through an enchanted gateway. The warm glow from the mushrooms, as well as the magenta rose petals that fluttered down from overhead to rest among the scattering in the dirt, imbued the path with a protective aura that seemed to cancel out the ever-present miasma that clung to every other corner of the cage. As the tunnel’s exit came into view, the song rang clear again.

Clear, and yet not as encompassing. It was as though the music had been projected before he’d entered the wall, but now only the pure source remained. What that meant, Rick wasn’t sure until he stepped out of the tunnel, finding himself in the center of four rose walls.

Magenta rose petals floated down like a light snow. The floor was a bed of petals, and in the center of that bed sat a glass globe. A snow globe. From it, the music played. Rick made his way to the center of the enclosure, to the snow globe, and he bent to take it into his hand.

He stood, feeling in his hand the vibrations of the mechanism rotating within: a drum of metal pins plucking a sad song. Rick looked into the globe and quirked a brow at the familiar snow family within. A mama, a little daughter, and a papa whose head had come off.

Although Rick held the globe steady, the material within began to rise and swirl, shrouding the snow family in a thick fog. And just as it had done in the second matryoshka room, the sight caused a dizziness to overcome Rick. And he might have looked away as he had before, except that he saw something strange within that fog. The snow family, he could have sworn, though he couldn’t see them clearly, were shifting into something different. Their whiteness grew flushed with new, earthy tones, and the more Rick tried to decipher the sight, the more his vision swam. The earthy tones formed into something like a face, and Rick felt his mind floating away in the fog. Except he couldn’t float. Not quite yet. His body was still too heavy.

“Tired,” Rick said. “So tired.” He wanted to see the face in the fog. “Can’t. I have to go.” This was dangerous. “Wasting time.” The fog swirled. The rose petals swirled. And he was tired. “I gotta… get out of here.” He needed to sleep. “I need to sleep.” He needed to look into the snow globe. “But why?” he asked himself. And somewhere, he heard the answer: There are dreams there.

The metal pole slipped from Rick’s hand and fell, softly, onto the bed of petals. And then Rick fell, also softly, first to his knees, then the rest of the way. In his hand, the snow globe landed before his eyes, and his eyes remained fixed on the swirls of colors within.

*~*~*

Sneaky. That was the word Morty would use to describe the way in which his feelings for his grandfather developed. Surprising. That would be another one. Unfortunate. Yet another.

Morty had had a handful of crushes throughout the years. Some more severe than others. Even as early as the first day of kindergarten, when he’d gotten butterflies from the girl who asked him to pass the green crayon. In third grade, he even got to be boyfriend-girlfriend with a girl for one day. She seemed to forget about the new relationship the next day, which left Morty very upset until he decided he didn’t really like her much anyhow. Unlike in fifth grade, when he fell in love for the first time after accidentally catching a peek of a girl’s underwear up the leg of her shorts. The crush lasted for the rest of the school year, only to fade over summer break. Then in seventh grade, he felt his first taste of heartbreak when the eighth grader who tutored him in the library on Wednesdays told him she already had a boyfriend. A freshman in high school. How could he compete with that?

He’d really thought there was chemistry between them, too.

Then in eighth grade, there was a boy he befriended because they shared a lunch. It was the first time another guy made him blush or feel giddy. It boggled Morty’s mind that this clearly attractive boy wasn’t more popular, and that they somehow shared the same geeky interests. Even more surprising, he took initiative to sit by Morty and talk to him during their lunch period. Morty supposed that liking this boy as he did meant that he might be bisexual, but it would be a long time before he could say the term comfortably in relation to himself. Not out of any prejudice that he was aware of, but because he felt an amount of phoniness in the concept. Sure, there was this kid, and afterward a small handful of passing attractive male faces. But wasn’t he really just straight with these few instances being outliers? Saying “bisexual” made him feel like he was putting himself in some special category, and who was he to call himself special?

Apparently, this boy - this “first gay crush” - had been in Morty’s school system from the beginning. They’d merely missed each other until now. Unfortunately, it was a short-lived friendship, for the boy’s family moved away before the end of the year. It was heartbreaking in its own right to lose even his platonic friendship.

These were only some of the crushes Morty had experience in his time prior to high school. Perhaps anybody else would find them childish, but they never seemed that way at the time.

And then there was high school. It was here where he met the girl who put his past flames to shame. Jessica. The beautiful redhead in his freshman math class. From the moment he spoke to her on that first day, Morty knew that he’d discovered true love. This was the girl he wanted to date. And the more he saw her, the more those feelings cemented. This was the woman he wanted to marry.

And yes, Jessica was popular. She was smart and well-liked among their peers. And yet, she was kind. She was friendly toward Morty even when her friends made it unnecessarily clear that they wanted him to go away. How could he help himself from falling for her? The months passed, and Morty’s feelings for her only grew.

And yeah, he fantasized about her. Regularly, in fact. He’d scroll through images online in search of women who resembled Jessica. He compared body types, trying to guess what she might look like beneath her clothes.

“What if when she takes off her bra, her tits flop down to the floor?” Rick had asked him once.

“They don’t,” he replied. “And if they do, I don’t care.”

“Ooh, nice response. Too bad there’s no women around to give you your good guy award.”

Rick was an enigma. In the few years that Mory had known him, he could never quite figure out where Rick stood on certain issues. He had a way of making Morty feel both insecure and emboldened about his feelings for the girls he found himself interested in. Rick might rib him or downright insult him for having a bad encounter with a girl. At other times, he would even insult the girls in ways that, for a man who seemed so sexually open-minded (Morty had even learned the term pansexual from Rick identifying himself as such) could be downright misogynistic. But Rick’s own sexual freedom painted him in a way that Morty found very attractive. He wanted to be that free, and it was striving for that freedom that allowed him to stand up to Rick’s insults. And often enough, when Morty took a stand, Rick backed down. Though not without a snide remark to end the conversation.

In truth, Morty suspected that Rick’s capitulations were no different than a mother tiger feigning defeated at her cubs’ practice attacks.

Sexual freedom along with a general sense of confidence. These were key characteristics that Morty admired about his grandfather. He couldn’t help but wonder how those characteristics played out in the bedroom. So Morty watched his pornographic videos or looked at nude images of women who shared features with Jessica, and when he pleasured himself, he imagined himself pleasuring her. And somewhere along the way, he found himself asking, how would Rick do it?

He wanted to imagine himself performing those techniques that labeled themselves in his mind as “Rick-esque”. Going down on a girl. He bet Rick was an expert. He wanted to go down on Jessica like that. (He didn’t notice that it was her point of view from which he watched the fantasy. Not for a long time.)

How would Rick, Morty asked himself, drag his hands up a woman’s (or man’s, or anyone’s. He’s pansexual, after all) body while rhythmically thrusting into her? He bet Rick would be rough, pounding in while biting down on her neck, leaving bruises and hickeys. Morty didn’t know if he’d be quite so rough himself, but something about Rick behaving that way burned him up inside.

Morty stilled his hand at this thought. Lying in bed with the lights off, his eyes opened wide. Just what the hell was he thinking about? How long had Rick been the subject of his fantasies? Taking place of himself in what he thought of as the “man’s” position? And where did Jessica go? How long had it been himself in her position?

In Morty’s mind ran a stream of _holy shit, holy shit, holy shit_ that sped along at the rate of his pounding heart, continuing even as he dared to resume his filthy fantasy.

Rick was attractive. In a way, Morty had always found him attractive. He could have lived with that. But this was beyond attraction. Attraction could have been an analytical appreciation. But panting beneath the sheets to the thought of his grandfather pleasuring him? Finding excuses to invade Rick’s personal space? Smelling his laundry and gazing stealthily at his figure? God, Rick wasn’t just attractive. He was sexy. And Morty was gross. Filthy. Weird. Mentally messed up. Incestuous. Disgusting. And it wasn’t just himself who felt this way. He’d done enough web searches, and had read many a blogger’s rant, to know that how he felt about Rick was nothing short of fucked up.

At fourteen, he wasn’t supposed to be attracted to a wrinkly, lanky seventy-something. Least of all his own goddamn grandfather. Gross. Filthy. Weird. Mentally messed up. Incestuous. Disgusting.

Morty hoped that over time, these strange feelings for Rick would ebb. But months went by, and they only festered. He tried diverting his attention, but as much as he still loved Jessica, she wasn’t enough to help him forget Rick. He tried to not think about it. But he was simply too stupid to control his thoughts the way Rick could. And Rick absolutely didn’t help the situation. Not with the way he would grab at Morty, yanking him around by his clothes or arm or sometimes even his hand. And when they watched TV alone together, they’d find themselves leaning into one another. Sometimes they’d share a blanket. Sometimes Rick would let Morty tuck his cold feet under his leg.

On occasion, Rick would come into Morty’s room late at night, very drunk, while Morty sat up on his phone or laptop, and he’d flop down on Morty’s bed, wrap his arms around the boy’s torso, and babble sleepy nonsense while he fell asleep. On these nights, Morty would run his hands through Rick’s hair, sometimes chancing a stroke of his cheek. One time, Rick woke from this and stared deeply into Morty’s eyes. Morty froze, sweat building and heart hammering. But then Rick drifted off again.

Morty wondered if these moments of closeness could at all have meant that Rick shared any of his feelings. After all, what grandpa and grandson sat together on the couch damn near cuddling? That couldn’t have been platonic. Unless it was. Unless anyone else who wasn’t so fucked up would never for a single moment have thought that those tender moments late at night were anything but platonic. All those times he thought he felt an electricity between himself and Rick, was he simply imagining it? Was he simply desiring it?

So there he was, thinking through all of this. Living in all of this. Filled to the brim with guilt and shame and longing. And sitting in Rick’s garage might be the answer to all of it. A true sign of idiocy would be to ignore a solution while it was presented to him. So Morty made the trip downstairs, peeking into the living room where Rick sat before tip-toeing to the garage.

In the garage, the metal pyramid sat on Rick’s workbench, lights glowing blue. Rick claimed it to be a cage for the demon Morty had awakened. A demon with thought devouring powers. Morty’s heart raced when he nabbed the cage and retreated with it to his bedroom.

The device looked simple enough. Two buttons on the sides and a weird touchpad on the bottom. He thought he could figure it out. He wasn’t sure exactly what would happen, but even if he screwed up and accidentally allowed the demon to escape, he figured he wouldn’t mind too much. Morty wasn’t big on this whole kidnapping thing anyhow. Freedom could even be payment for helping him. The demon could even wipe his memory of setting her free so that Rick couldn’t get the truth from him. How was that for being a moron?

Morty clutched the device so tight between his sweaty palms that the corners left divots in his skin. He took a deep breath. “Just do it, Morty,” he whispered to himself. “Get it over with.”

There was a small thought in the back of his mind telling him how much he wanted to keep his feelings. Despite all the disgust, that specific brand of affection between him and his grandfather warmed him. It was a thought he hated, so Morty smacked himself and set to work on figuring out the device.

He pushed one button, then the other. Then he pushed his finger on the bottom panel. At first, nothing happened. But then Morty swiped his finger down the touchpad, and a swirling disk of blue light appeared in front of the device. Slowly, its center opened, creating a porthole through which Morty could see into the cage. It was a small room, the walls, floor, and ceiling all the same unnerving, sterile white. But he only vaguely noticed this because across the room, sitting against the wall, was the demon.

Hawk-like feet. Hands like a sphynx cat’s. Bat wings spanning across the wall. And that giant doberman head with one large, yellow eye staring directly at Morty. Morty barely managed a gasp before the demon’s form began to vibrate, spreading duplicate after-images until they formed a wheel of demon faces. And in the next instant, the demon lunged forward. Though Morty didn’t see the lunge. Only that doberman face and giant eye appearing before him, filling the entirety of the porthole. That husky, womanly voice he’d heard earlier spoke to him once more:

“You awoke me only to ensnare me, and you dare show yourself in my presence? Free me from these confines, human wretch!”

That voice which awed Morty before now struck terror to his core. He swallowed. “OK,” he said, his body trembling, and yet the porthole remained steady before the pyramid. “OK, I’ll let you go. B-but you have to do something for me first.”

The demon snarled and growled, and Morty shivered at the beastly vocalizations. In truth, Morty didn’t know how to free the demon. But desperation drove him.

“I hear you can eat thoughts,” Morty said.

The demon continued a low growl as the voice played in Morty’s head. “Thoughts. Ideas. Memories. Dreams. Patterns of light that haunt your kind’s simple minds.”

“Y-yeah. Well, I have thoughts. A-and I don’t want them anymore. I want you to take them away. So i-i-if you do that, I’ll let you out.” Or at least he’d make a genuine effort.

The demon looked Morty up and down, then it glared into his eyes. “Why do you lie to Ba’dendti, you disgusting worm?”

“W-what?”

“You don’t hold the knowledge to set me free. You are a miserable deceiver! You trap me, and you lie to me with no respect for my power! You are less than a worm! You are shit that a worm wouldn’t even eat!”

“You don’t understand!”

Ba’dendti did not listen to Morty. The demon’s doberman maw stretched wide, and from it shot barbed spears of golden light, the same color as that terrible eye. They struck the porthole, piercing it and breaking through. Then they struck Morty’s face, tearing into his flesh and plunging into his eyes. He wanted to scream, but his throat felt like fire. He wanted to call for Rick. He was being torn from his body. He knew this even without understanding what it meant.

“Rick,” he croaked pitifully. “Rick. Hh… help.”

“Bare your mind to Ba’dendti, little shit,” he heard the demon say, though he only saw darkness. “I’ll clear you of those painful thoughts, and the one who knows how to open the cage, the one who hurt us both, will come to pay his price. Admit your sinful thoughts to me. We shall both be set free.”

*~*~*

In that moment, Morty’s bed felt more comfortable than even the silk robes made by the Fu-roth, the moth people of Crysalica. Morty’s nude body, warm and soft, moved against Rick’s own nakedness. Rick breathed Morty in, and when he pressed his arousal to Morty’s own, the boy whimpered so sweetly that Rick was certain his old heart would come unravelled because of it. If only they could stay like this forever.

“Rick,” Morty murmured, heated body continuing to move in time with Rick’s, his face buried in his grandfather’s chest, fingers curling where they rested against Rick’s shoulder blade. “Hold me. Hold me tighter.”

Rick obeyed, sliding his fingers into those brown curls and laying a hand over the expanse of the boy’s back, pulling their sweat-dampened bodies ever closer. “I’ll never let go,” Rick whispered. “Ahh, god Morty. I’ll never let go of you.”

“I’ve wanted you for so long, Rick,” Morty admitted, mouth hot against Rick’s collarbone. “And you wanted me too, right?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“I wanted you.”

“Wanted who?”

“Wanted you, Morty.”

“Rick. Ahh, I’m not gonna last.”

“It’s OK, baby.”

Morty moaned, and so did Rick. Morty brought a hand to Rick’s cheek, running his thumb over his jaw. Rick took his hand and squeezed it, and Morty pulled his head back to look up at him.

“Rick. I want you to kiss me.” Rick moved in, eager to comply, but Morty spoke again. “You want to?” he asked.

“God, yes.”

“Please tell me.”

“I want to kiss you.”

Morty moaned, and Rick covered his mouth with his own. He dove his tongue in, taking a quick and greedy drink before moving down to take the skin of Morty’s neck into his mouth. Morty cried out, and the rhythm of Rick’s hips hastened at the sound.

“Ah, Rick. Tell me how you wanted me.”

Rick spoke against Morty’s wet neck. “Terribly. Awfully. Idiotically.”

Morty whined. “Say my name again,” he begged.

“Morty,” Rick moaned. “Morty. Morty.” He was on the edge now. Morty put a hand on the back of his head, pulling at his hair to lead him to meet his eyes. Morty smiled blissfully as his name died on Rick’s tongue, “Mor—” There was a gleam, like a flicker, in Morty’s eyes.

This wasn’t right, Rick thought. How did they get here?

“Rick! I’m—”

Shit. “No,” Rick grunted, slamming his eyes shut as he was overcome by both a dreadful realization and his climax. He heard laughter. Was it Morty’s? No. Ba’dendti’s.

Fog swirled in Rick’s vision, and it was with great mental effort that he pulled himself away from it. He felt his body - his actual body - and he felt the weight of the snow globe in his hand. Rick jumped to his knees, dropping the globe, and as it hit the bed of rose petals, the music ceased. Rick panted while his pulse thudded, his body drenched in sweat and electricity dancing on his skin.

He blinked at his surroundings. The four rose hedge walls began to shift, the leaves turning dark and curling in on themselves as the vines grew thin and withered. The walls, Rick realized, were rotting. They shrank and collapsed to the ground, and at the same time, the warm glow of the mushrooms faded. He watched, stunned, as each orange mushroom turned purple.

With the walls down, Rick could see the trees of the surrounding woods, and in that cold, purple light he watched the trees’ trunks turn black and their leaves wilt and fall. The only life he saw were the magenta rose petals that continued to rain down from somewhere far above.

He began to stand, not noticing the only remaining rose bush vine snaking its way up his back until he felt it snap tight around his neck, its thorns biting around the circumference of it. Rick yelped as the vine yanked him to his feet.

“Let go!” he yelled. “Let! Go!”

Like a snake, the vine coiled more of itself around his neck, thorns dragging like a serrated blade as it reeled him in. He clawed uselessly at the thorny vine, finding it harder and harder to breathe, and soon he was being lifted off his feet. He kicked wildly as the vine pulled him into the air.

Rick choked, drool running fast down his chin and over the well-coiled vine. Then, lightning-quick, the vine ripped back, tearing across his neck as he fell to the ground. A splatter of blood landed atop one of the purple mushrooms, painting its glow red.

Rick breathed raggedly, scrambling to his feet. But the vine hadn’t left him completely, its end leashing him to the spot. And before he could do anything, it was reeling him in again, sliding sharp around his neck and spilling more of his blood onto the ground as it pulled him back into the air.

He had to free himself. Frantically, Rick searched his coat pockets until he found the steak knife, but when he pulled it out, the end caught the edge of his pocket, and he lost his hold on the handle. Wide eyes watched the steak knife turn end over end, falling down the length of his long legs.

 _Clack_. Rick threw his feet together, catching the blade between the soles of his shoes. The handle extended precariously out. Somehow, Rick’s eyes widened further.

The vine continued to reel him higher. At this rate, when it dropped him again, he might not leave the fall unharmed. And if it didn’t drop him, he’d be strangled to death. Rick pulled his knees up and curled his gut, hands reaching for the knife between his feet. Spots were appearing before his streaming eyes, but with a few swinging crunches, he managed to snatch the knife handle.

At first, he tried to reach behind himself to cut the vine, but the blade kept slipping, and soon the vine was moving, swinging him. Though he hated to do it, he had no other choice but to slip the knife between his neck and the vine. The metal pressed into his sore, bloody flesh, and he sawed.

The vine snapped, and he fell to the bed of petals. He got to his hands and knees, hacking and coughing. Then he turned to watch the snake-like vine through bleary eyes. It swayed in the air before wilting and falling to the ground.

More blood dripped onto the ground from Rick’s neck. Hesitantly, he touched the side of his throat, surprised and grateful to find the damage to be little more than surface deep. Bloody and friction-burned, but nothing too profuse.

He sighed, wiping his excessive drool before pocketing the steak knife. Then he scowled, remembering the visions from the snow globe. He pulled out the front of his pants and looked down, with a grimace, at the mess he’d made within.

With the vine dead and the walls and music gone, he picked up his pole and got to his feet. All around him were wilted woods and raining rose petals. He looked at the overturned snow globe on the ground, and he brought the end of his pole down on it, shattering it.

Rick trudged through the woods, rushing as much as he could with a limp on uneven ground. He needed to find the path again.

Eventually, he made his way out of the woods and back into the jungle. He knew this when he was hit with the cloying rot of the thick vegetation. Piles of leaves and flowers lay wilted, and when Rick stepped on them, fruity juices squelched. He nearly gagged at the odor as he moved through it. Then, finally, he saw the path where it trailed near a wall he recognized. He hurried to the path, following it to where it traveled by the tall window. Then he stopped.

The jungle vines that had covered the window like drapes had died and fallen away. The few that remained hung like dead branches. And painted in red down the surface of the window was a question:

**Whose fault is it really?**

Rick continued down the path, soon returning to the wood of blackened trees. The petals were starting to cover the ground, but the path remained untouched. When something approached him from the woods, he didn’t notice right away. But when he heard the crunch of sticks and leaves, he knew he wasn’t alone. He turned to the sound in the woods, pole raised.

“Stay away from me! I mean it!” he yelled, voice hoarse. And when there came no response, he continued on. Then he heard it again, but instead of stopping, he tried to pick up his pace. Soon, he heard pattering footfalls on the path behind him, chasing him. But Rick didn’t want to run. He wanted to stop this thing dead in its tracks. So he raised his pole, turned, and swung.

Leafy arms wrapped around Rick’s torso, and his pipe swung blindly through the air. He shouted out in surprise, looking down at the thing clinging to him. And when he got a good look at it, he was dumbfounded.

It’s body was a twisting of green stems from which its leafy arms and legs grew, giving it a humanoid figure with a head that was nothing more than a large rose. It stood to the height of Rick’s chin and had no eyes or mouth on its rose head. The only sounds it made were small squeaks like a mouse. Rick made to break away from its hold, but a second, slightly shorter one came from the side to wrap its arms around him as well, locking Rick’s own arms at his sides.

“Get off of me, you doofy creeps,” he said, trying to pull away. But the rose heads held tight. They rocked, causing Rick to sway on his feet, but they weren’t hurting him.

Rick wriggled one arm free of their hold - “I said, get off!” - and grabbed one by the center of its rose face.

The creature squeaked loudly as its petals turned dark and curled in. Its green, leafy body turned brown and limp, shrivelling as it fell to the ground.

The remaining rose head held tight, burying its face in Rick’s chest and squeaking repeatedly. Rick grabbed it by the back of the head, forcing it back before cramming his hand into the center of its petals and clutching. The thing screamed out while it wilted in the same manner as the first, and it fell dead across the path. Rick heard a twig snap nearby, and when he shot a snarling glare at its direction, he saw a third rose head hunched behind a tree. It squeaked, then ran off into the woods.

 

When he finally made it to the end of the path, he found himself before another pink, velvet curtain. He threw it open, finding a staircase beyond. Rich, polished wood ascended to a lit room above. And floating down from that room was the sound of piano and violins. Rick took hold of the smooth handrail and made his way up the stairs, stopping about halfway when it occurred to him what this music was. A more complex rendition of the music from the snow globe. The demon must have believed him an idiot, Rick thought, to think he’d fall for the same trick twice. Although Rick already felt very much ashamed for falling for it once. However...

“It’s not like there’s anywhere else to go,” he told himself. And with the thought that he must continue, he climbed toward the music.

Atop the staircase was a room like a small, Victorian parlor. Maroon wallpaper and couches with dull floral patterns decorated the room. Against the right wall was a fireplace, though with no fire. And on the left wall was a wide window.

What sight laid beyond the window would have to wait for Rick’s attention because what hung about the middle of the room was more immediately peculiar. Hanging from the ceiling by ribbons were four pairs of porcelain, ball-jointed dolls. They were nude and hairless, and positioned as if dancing to the music. Their glass eyes, a variety of colors, stared past each other and into nothingness.

As for the music, Rick located its source quickly. Across the room stood a small table on top of which sat a phonograph. It was from this phonograph that the piano and violins played, and Rick marched directly across the room, passing between the hanging dolls, to get to it, smacking the needle off of the record and putting an end to the eternal instrumental piece.

He turned to look about the room in silence, and then he turned to the window.

This window, like the tall one downstairs, led to another room from Floor 1. The nightclub called The Tower where he’d fought the mannequins. If the mannequins were still down there, he couldn’t see them for the fog that continued to roll over the floor. But he could see their cages, as well as the one he’d been locked in. All three cage doors remained open.

Suddenly, the phonograph began to play again. Rick jumped, whipping around to find the needle returned to the record. He scowled, stomping to the phonograph and slamming his hand down, causing the record to scratch sharply as it spun backwards. And just as Rick’s hand reached the needle, something in the warped, reversed music caused him to falter.

He brought his hand away, and the music played. Then he reached for the record again, placing his fingers gingerly on its surface, and steadily he spun the record backwards.

At first, the sound was merely that of the music. Then came the flicker of a voice. Rick slowed his speed, and he heard a deep-pitched, warbling voice.

“You know, don’t you? Whose fault it really is? You know, don’t you? Whose fault it really is?”

Rick gradually quickened the speed, attempting to get the voice pitch to something more natural. “You know, don’t you?” the voice asked, growing lighter. “Whose fault it really is? You know, don’t you?” It was starting to sound familiar. In fact, it almost sounded like Beth. But why Beth, he wondered. “You know, don’t you?”

No. It wasn’t Beth.

“Whose fault it really is? Don’t you, Rick?”

Rick tore the record from the phonograph.

_Smash._

With a gasp unbecoming of him, Rick spun around, record gripped in his hand. One of the dolls lay shattered on the floor, its partner left hanging by their ribbon. Rick breathed heavily, and he shivered.

How, he wondered, could Diane’s voice have been on the record? Had Morty even ever heard her voice?

As for the smashed porcelain doll, something red sat within its cracked shoulder socket. Rick sat the record on a nearby couch and inspected the red thing, pinching it between his fingers to pull it out.

It was a cloth folded into a heart. Rick unfolded it, and inside was stitched a message in black thread. It read, “Escape from Hell means fighting Hell fire.”

“I mean, it’s applicable. I’ll give you that.,” he said with a shrug as he stuffed the cloth into his pocket. “Fire,” he hummed.

He looked at the dolls again, a suspicious sensation coming over him. Their eyes, he was certain, had been forward facing when he’d arrived. Now, however, they all seemed to face in the same direction. Even the eyes of the shattered doll, one of which had popped out, looked in that direction. They were all looking, Rick saw, at the fireplace.

Rick bent before the fireplace. It was cold and clean as though left unused. There was no wood in the rack either. He ran his hand along the back brick wall, finding it peculiarly smooth. In fact, it wasn’t brick but rather particle board painted to look like brick. And at one side of the back wall, his fingers came across a slot. He reached his fingers through the slot, and the whole back wall jostled. “Ah-hah,” Rick said with a smile, pulling away what he discovered to be a false back. He removed the wood rack from the fireplace, then pulled the particle board all the way out.

Behind the fireplace was a small elevator. Or rather a dumbwaiter, for a rope came down from a pulley on the ceiling of the box. And growing in the corner of the ceiling was one of the purple glow-shrooms.  
“I guess fighting Hell fire means squeezing myself into a tiny box,” Rick said as he looked the small space over. It was large enough for him to sit in at least. He looked back at the room. At the dolls and the phonograph and the record on the couch. Then he faced the elevator again, sliding in. “No more pit stops. No more getting distracted. No more traps. If I’m gonna get killed, it can be after my job is done.” He grabbed hold of the rope and began pulling, and the dumbwaiter began to rise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed the chapter! Feel free to let me know what you thought. I always get pumped up when I receive your kind comments. Until next time. Take care.
> 
> More of the AMAZING comic for this story by [ghostygoo-girl](http://ghostygoo-girl.tumblr.com/):  
> [Pages 8-10](http://ghostygoo-girl.tumblr.com/post/164988378901/beginning-pages-8-10-previous-next-so-in)  
> [Pages 11-13](http://ghostygoo-girl.tumblr.com/post/166652125636/beginning-pages-11-13-previous-next-coming)
> 
> Don't forget to check end notes of previous chapters for fan art you might have missed.


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